Aren't "strong men" often in fact weak men, incapable of really governing? Do they not claim to embody their country’s grandeur when they in fact primarily represent their people’s misfortune? It is at least what is suggested in the following portrait of Marshal Sisi by Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor at Science-Po and eminent expert of the Middle East.

Michel Duclos, Special Advisor, editor of this series.



In August 2012, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was promoted, to everyone’s surprise, Minister of Defense, thus replacing Marshal Tantawi, who had occupied this position for more than 20 years. It was an unexpected step up for the 57-year-old general, who had until then held the relatively minor position of Director of Military Intelligence. The author of this dramatic development is Mohammed Morsi, elected in June 2012 as Head of State with 51.7% of the votes, during the first democratic presidential elections in Egypt's history. A pillar of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi replaced Tantawi with Sisi in order to ensure the armed forces’ loyalty to the government. That is all it took for the international press to worry about the new Minister's "notorious Islamism".



A year later, however, Sisi overthrew Morsi and violently crushed the Muslim Brotherhood's protests against his coup. After having claimed his refusal of personal power, he methodically prepared his own election as President of the Republic, in May 2014, during which he officially won 97% of the votes. His only opponent asserted that such figures were "an insult to the Egyptian people’s intelligence". In March 2018, Sisi will be yet again "re-elected" with 97% of the votes, this time against a candidate who is unconditionally loyal to the incumbent President. The nagging question is therefore whether or not Sisi is particularly devious and ambitious. Has he concealed his manoeuvres to then seize the supreme power and keep it at any price? Or is he the mere product of the long-term crisis in which Egypt has entered since the popular uprising against Mubarak's dictatorship (1981 to 2011)?