Intensive meetings have been taking place over the past few days at several presidential quarters — some with and many without the participation of newly inaugurated President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. The key objective of these meetings, as one presidential official said, is “to put things in place and to set out the presidency for a new phase”. This means a clear and detailed assignment of the tasks facing the new president. So far there are two teams: a large executive board that will bring together diplomats, military officers and bureaucrats. This team will be in charge of processing the presidential operation: information, meetings, state schedules and, of course, security. The second team will be an advisory board around ten members with specific expertise to provide views on a range of matters on which the president is particularly keen to solicit advice. They include nuclear technology, irrigation and agrarian reforms and education. Under consideration, in meetings Al-Sisi is conducting with a small group of advisors, is the forming of a third board to take charge of the economic file and the mega projects the president is determined to launch, starting with the scheme to expand and diversify economic activities around the Suez Canal. The prime minister, representatives of the Armed Forces who will be responsible for deciding land allocations, ministers with economic, trade and industry portfolios, and representatives of the private sector and economists will likely be members. “This is a man who has lots of energy and who wants to deliver; he will have things moving around the clock, that is for sure, and this is why it might take a few more days before the teams are finally put in place because he does not want just anybody to be working with him. He wants people who are hard workers but also people he can trust,” says one presidential source. He added that the involvement of a few military people in the presidential team “is not at all new; it has been the case since the time of Gamal Abdel-Nasser”.
Al-Sisi takes office: On the day following his inauguration on Sunday Al-Sisi chose to operate from the Heliopolis Presidential Palace of Al-Ittihadiya — the same venue that Mubarak used for 30 years and that both Morsi and interim president Adli Mansour operated from. This is not going to be, according to security and presidential sources, the permanent office of the president. It is, they say, a tough security challenge to transport the head of state into and out of the palace on a daily basis. The decision of the head of state to hold his first meetings in the office Mubarak, Morsi, and Mansour occupied was designed to send a political message that he was “assuming office”. According to other sources some presidential meetings will be held in Al-Ittihadiyah, others at the Al-Kobba Palace. The daily presidential operation, however, will be run from a well-secured office far from heavy traffic way and close to the highly secured residence allocated for Al-Sisi.
Festivities, hopes and concerns: According to one source who was at Al-Ittihadiya for the first day of work the new president is beyond feeling festive. “It is not like he is unaware of the files or the facts but he is hitting reality — and maybe reality is hitting him too. He still looks joyful and proud but also down to earth.” Al-Sisi's joy and pride are obvious. The inauguration of the newly-elected president on Sunday was accompanied by a media brouhaha that portrayed the beginning of the four-year presidential term as the restoration of the stature of the state. That was the explicit and implicit message of most state-run and privately owned media outlets. “It is very true. Everything about the inauguration spoke of the return of the state. Under Morsi the state was undermined and compromised in favour of the organisation to which he belonged but Al-Sisi is someone who comes from the state and who believes in the state,” said Nevine, a Heliopolis resident as she sipped her coffee at a café not far from Al-Ittihadiya. Nevine was not impressed by the fact that Morsi went to Tahrir Square “amongst all those Islamists” to repeat the official oath he took before the Supreme Constitutional Court. For her that was “an early sign that this man was not willing to act as head of state and to commit to the state away from any previous affiliations; it was a sign that the state for him was just a stop but the real association was his people who filled up Tahrir Square”. Al-Sisi did not depart a single inch, much to the pleasure of Nevine, from the tight rules of presidential protocol. He took the oath before the Supreme Constitutional Court then went to the presidential palace at Heliopolis where he received the official salute. Al-Sisi signed a document transferring power and received a copy of the constitution from interim president Adli Mansour. He then decorated Mansour with the Nile Medal of Honour in recognition of his service as president during the transition that started with the ouster of Morsi and which was announced by Al-Sisi himself in his then capacity as chief of the army. In the evening Al-Sisi arrived at Al-Kobba Palace for a supposedly grand soiree where he delivered his inaugural speech to an invited audience that included senior state officials, public and political figures. To critics this was an overstated inauguration — closer to a coronation than the inauguration of the head of a republic. For those who took exception to the inauguration of Al-Sisi it did not matter whether this inaugural procedure was similar to that of other democratic republics because it was simply incompatible with the political reality in Egypt where turmoil remains despite the grand festivities. “This is out of touch with reality. This is someone who is aware only of those who voted for him. But they are not the only ones in a country that is still marked by the deep political splits we have been living with since the second round of the last presidential elections when we had to choose between Morsi and Shafik,” said Dalia, a student of law drinking coffee at the same café as Nevine. Unlike Nevine, who voted for Shafik in the first and second round of the 2012 elections, Dalia voted for rights activist and lawyer Khaled Ali in the first round and boycotted in the second. She also boycotted what she qualifies as the “no choice to start with” election between Al-Sisi and Hamdeen Sabahi, “who clearly did not stand a chance before the man who was not just clearly popular but who was also supported by the entire state and media”. Dalia found Al-Sisi's inaugural speech “loaded with too many platitudes and very long”. The inaugural speech: The length of the inaugural speech was inevitable given there were so many issues that “he had to touch upon and would have been bitterly criticised if he had not”, said one of Al-Sisi's campaigners. In his speech, Al-Sisi made a couple of references to the 25 January Revolution – a message to those who question his acknowledgement of the 18-day nation-wide demonstrations that brought an abrupt end to Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. He also made a reference to the 23 July 1952 Revolution that led to the establishment of the republic — a message to critics of the grand inauguration who found the day suggestive of royal pretensions. And then there were the references to 30 June demonstrations, to which Al-Sisi himself was party as he encouraged Morsi to bow to the will of millions calling for a referendum. “Our popular revolution on 30 June restored the 25 January Revolution and rectified its path,” he said. Al-Sisi was keen to distance himself from both Mubarak and Morsi. He was, after all, Morsi's minister of defence he was Mubarak's head of military intelligence. “The power of the Egyptian people toppled authoritarian and failed regimes,” he said. In his speech Al-Sisi sought to reassure as many groups as possible. He promised facilities — including access to state land and positive investment to the business community which has been — as one entrepreneur said on the eve of the inauguration, extravagantly supportive of his candidacy. He promised the poor much needed support, better health care and better education. He promised huge development schemes and the expansion of small and medium size economic enterprises. He addressed the young with words of faith in their role, women with words of respect, and the Armed Forces, that “factory of men and the symbol of discipline”. He spoke of the demands of the 25 January Revolution: freedom, bread, social justice and human dignity — but promised a new concept of liberties “coupled with discipline”. He acknowledged the role of art and culture and made a general promise for their endorsement but insisted that they would have to be compatible with national identity. He acknowledged the role of Al-Azhar and the church but insisted that their role was one of moral leadership because under his rule “there will be no parallel leadership for Egypt — only one single leadership.” He acknowledged the need to combat corruption but shared no ideas on how this is to be achieved. He saluted the memory of the martyrs, lumping together those who died during the 18 days of the 25 January Revolution, many at the hands of the police, with police and army officers killed in operations since the ouster of Morsi. He said he would not allow for the exclusion of any Egyptian “except those who had opted for violence”. But warned the state faced the fallout from decades of incompetence.
THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD: Having followed the inauguration on television Amr Ezzat, a human rights activist, sounded sober and a little pessimistic. “It was really a show of style over content,” he said. Ezzat is particularly disturbed by the fact that the formalities of the inauguration process were given “overdue attention”. The most charitable interpretation, he said, is that this is a reflection of “a very short-sighted assessment on the side of those who planned the inauguration because their focus was on contrasting what Morsi stood for with a supposed grandeur”. A less charitable reading, says Ezzat, is that the day was a not so subdued announcement of the return of pre-25 January practices. “This is not about Mubarak. This is rather about the way the state was and how it will be run,” he argued. “Void of any real content — even on the full or partial re-introduction of the Mubarak state,” is the way Ezzat qualifies the inaugural speech. “He was not committing to anything; it was an extended sequence of rhetoric that yielded no serious indications about where this man is heading.” It is, Ezzat argued, the announcement of the victory not just of Al-Sisi as president but of the state as it prevailed for at least the decades of Mubarak rule. Dina Shehata, a political expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, is willing to go a step further, arguing that the inauguration of Al-Sisi is not just about the return of the old ways of the state but “rather the consolidation of the state in its old version after the elimination of public discontent over some of the old faces of the state”. “The state bureaucracy has not been so unified for a long time. Under Mubarak they were clearly competing but now they are unified even if only for the cause of defeating political Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood, the war on terror or whatever they call it,” Shehata argued. To maintain this sense of unity within the state bureaucracy and to solidify public approval of this bureaucracy, Shehata predicts Al-Sisi will give priority to both economic and security files. And these, argues prominent columnist and political commentator Osama Al-Ghazali Harb, are “precisely the priorities of the people who overwhelmingly voted for Al-Sisi”. “I am not here trying to fudge the concerns of some over the concept of liberties and the chances for a less open approach at least during the early phase of the rule of Al-Sisi that some have been bringing up but I am being clear in looking reality in the face and this would immediately reveal a nation frustrated with its economic prospects and compromised security and that is in fact keener on stability than liberty,” Harb argues.
THE DAY AFTER: Ezzat and Shehata saw in the inauguration day and speech reasons for concerns for freedom. Ezzat is convinced that what Al-Sisi was trying to suggest and what he really believes is that the public, once known for its apathy, has become too politically engaged. Harb, for his part, saw early indications of tough international challenges. The low-level representation at the inauguration by the US and European countries worries Harb. It is, he said, an indication that the West in general is “still hostage of the ultra-conservative reading of the political developments in this country since 30 June last year”. “They remain hostage to a reading that suggests that Morsi was democratically elected and that Al-Sisi, as chief of the army, announced his ouster and then ran for president and won; but this reading, which I am willing to argue is greatly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood's strong media campaigning and lobbying machinery, overlooks some key facts on the ground regarding the anti-Morsi momentum. It also overlooks the fact that a revolution, and what we had on 30 June last year was one, is as democratic an act as the election of a president. The people who have the right to elect a president have the right to have him removed.” Harb is convinced that unease in relations with the West will eventually be dispelled but “it could well take a while and this is not very positive, to have Al-Sisi starting off his presidency on a cold note with some of Egypt's traditional political allies”. Diplomats in Egypt and in several key Egyptian diplomatic missions overseas acknowledge that they still have a long way to go before relations with the West are restored to their “traditional” degree of “medium warmth”. “What we have in common in terms of political, economic and strategic interests is too much to compromise; things are already better this month than they were 11 months ago and they will further improve – with a bit of freedom support gestures on the ground from the elected president, for sure,” said an Egyptian diplomat posted in a key Western capital. In his meetings Al-Sisi has been discussing another element of improving relations the world “including but not just the West”, a presidential source says. Two key matters in this respect include the pursuit of parliamentary elections promptly “despite the calls made by some for a delay”, according to one political source. The second is to have an efficient and hardworking government to immediately attend to the priorities of the public and thus ensure there is no falling off in the president's approval ratings or in public confidence in the man who bowed to will of the people and became Egypt's seventh president.
