EGYPT

Once again, Egypt has a senior military officer in charge of the country’s affairs. Field Marshal Abdulfattah el-Sisi, recently promoted from the rank of General, has been elected with the support of 97 per cent of the voters (of a low turnout) and has been inaugurated into office. He officially stood down from his military appointment in contesting the presidency. For the past 60-years, ever since the Free Officers Movement overthrew King Farouk in 1952, the Egyptian government has had a senior military strongman at the helm. Successive leaders – Naguib, Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak – all came from the military, so on that basis el-Sisi’s political victory in now leading his country should come as no great surprise.

For many, though, given the political earthquake and subsequent tremors that have occurred over the past three years, and the way in which power has been handed over, will leave many feeling uncomfortable if not untoward. The high hopes of the Arab Spring and the resulting revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak were undone by the election of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammed Morsi’s mandate suggested that the Arab world’s most populous country would become increasingly Islamised, and became a significant factor in his eventual deposition that came in the form of a military coup. But now the Brotherhood is proscribed once more and most of its leaders are in prison.

Whether President el-Sisi is to be remembered as another Arab tyrant will depend on how he utilises his unparalleled position of public dominance. Time will tell – and history will record – whether he is able to reform his country’s anachronistic and decrepit institutions and his ability to convert an inward-looking society into one that is more representative of the modern age. In the short-term, his priorities must be to overhaul the police and judiciary and to end the daily charades of how justice is dispensed in the courts.