2023-10-04 07:00:00
In Egypt, civil servants and beneficiaries of the government’s main benefit program for the poor are being forced to sign petitions in support of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi so that he can keep his post until 2030, while the country prepares for the presidential elections.
The national electoral authority announced the dates of the elections last month, scheduled between December 10 and 12, and nominations for the elections are expected to take place between October 5 and 14.
According to the authority’s rules, for a candidate to run in the presidential election, he must be supported by at least 20 members of the House of Representatives or by not less than 25,000 citizens with the right to vote in at least 15 governorates (with a minimum of a thousand in each governorate).
While Sisi can easily obtain the support of Parliament, dominated by his supporters from the Party of the Future of the Nation (PFN), government agencies have engaged in a national campaign aimed at collecting signatures in favor of the incumbent president, who has confirmed Monday that he would seek a third term.
According to testimonies collected by Middle East Eyethese signatures are accompanied by intimidation and bribes, despite the denials of the public media which assure that these petitions for the candidacy of Sissi are free.
No less than six different people told MEE that they had been threatened, bribed or forced to go to the offices to sign the petition in support of Sissi’s candidacy.
These testimonies correspond to reports on social networks suggesting that the program Takaful et Karama (a state-funded social security system) is suspending monthly pensions and new enrollments in the program until potential or current beneficiaries sign petitions in support of Sissi.
“We had to show and photocopy our file [de soutien à Sissi] in order to obtain our pension »
– Om Omnia, cleaning lady in a nursery
Takaful and Karama is the flagship allocation program of the Sissi presidency. Funded by UNICEF and the World Bankit benefits 22 million people75% of whom are women from the most vulnerable socio-economic backgrounds in the country.
Om Omnia (51 years old), cleaning lady in a nursery, tells MEE that her September pension was held hostage until she presented a signature in support of Sissi. She lives in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Cairo, Ain Shams.
She says she and dozens of others had to report to the PFN offices.
“We were told to gather in front of the building [du PFN] and register. Then, we were put on buses to the nearest office to vote for Sissi,” she recounts. “We had to show and photocopy our file [de soutien] in order to obtain our Takaful pension [et Karama] for September. »
Videos and public media coverage emphasize on scenes where we see dozens of people arriving at the registration offices to support Sissi, most of whom are individuals over 50 from the country’s poor backgrounds.
Tahani, a 54-year-old widow and street vendor in Cairo, experienced a similar scenario. She receives 550 Egyptian pounds (17 euros) per month under the Takaful and Karama program.
Her social worker called her to report a problem with the bank card she used to receive her pension, and told her she had to sign the petition to have the problem resolved.
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“We stood in the sun for three hours waiting for our turn. [On était] mainly divorcees, widows and cancer or kidney patients,” she describes.
“If I don’t have these 550 pounds, I won’t be able to feed my children or buy my diabetes medication. »
Abu Emad is a retired plumber in Luxor seeking to collect Takaful pension. It says officials required the petition of support as a prerequisite to completing the application.
“I have been trying to apply for this pension for eight months, but staff from the Ministry of Solidarity told us that applications would only be open from today and that we “might” get the pensions following the election,” he confided to MEE by telephone.
In one of his speeches at a state-funded conference in the new administrative capital, Sisi on Saturday called his opponents “liars, saboteurs and malicious.” His critics question the billions spent on infrastructure projects undertaken by the president while many Egyptians struggle to make ends meet.
“You Egyptians, don’t dare say that you would rather eat than build and progress,” Sissi proclaimed. “If the price of the nation’s progress and prosperity is to be hungry and thirsty, then let us not eat and drink,” he added.
Civil servants threatened
Civil servants are also forced to sign petitions in favor of Sissi.
Atef (49), employed at the Ministry of Agriculture, explains that his bosses forced all the staff in his office to form four teams so that they might all go and sign the petitions of support.
“The leader, a member of the Party of the Future of the Nation, was threatening by warning that we all had to go “or else”, implying that we would be questioned by state security which has offices in the building,” he says.
“I don’t like the president because he made me and my family poor. I told the boss I was going to support someone else and [mon chef] threatened me with prison and terrorism charges. »
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Mona al-Sayyad, employed by the Ministry of Education in Alexandria, encountered the same situation. She was intimidated by her superiors to present a receipt for signing the petition of support; otherwise, his medical leave would be rejected.
She supports Ahmed Tantawi, a former MP and former leader of the Nasserist Karama party, who was the first to announce his intention to run for president in May.
“I will choose him in the elections when I have more freedom, even if I have to fake sick leave,” she says.
Tantawi is the most vocal opposition figure hoping to run once morest Sisi, with popularity growing among young people and those affected by Egypt’s severe economic crisis.
Tantawi pledged to release political prisoners, strengthen social safety nets, and establish a healthy social and political climate that would embrace Egyptians of all political affiliations.
On Monday, he condemned Sisi’s suggestion that Egyptians must starve for the nation’s progress.
Speaking directly to the president, he wrote : “In fact, Egyptians died of starvation under your regime because of your administration. They did not see the promised development. »
Tantawi also accuses Sissi of spreading lies and multiplying “skyscrapers, cities and palaces in the desert, even if this is to the detriment of the Egyptians.” [lambda] and their right to a decent life and education.”
« [Le gouvernement] “has deprived citizens of social protection, leaving two-thirds of Egyptians below or near the poverty line, while the living conditions of the rest have dangerously deteriorated,” he continues.
Middle East Eye contacted the electoral authority to ask if it had received any reports of violations and corruption. A manager fired MEE to the State Information Service, which declined to comment.
A member of the PFN in Aboukir, in the governorate of Alexandria, supports MEE that “retirees and the elderly need advice and help with complex procedures and this is what the party takes care of”.
This party member, who requested anonymity, assures that the corruption allegations are false and spread by supporters of opposition candidates.
Economic crisis
The presidential election in Egypt, a country of 109 million inhabitants, will take place once morest a backdrop of a serious economic crisis which has seen the Egyptian pound lose half its value once morest the dollar, causing record inflation and shortages of foreign currencies. .
By August, annual inflation reached nearly 40% according to official figures, driving new Egyptians near or below the poverty line.
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While the financial crisis has many causes, including the covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, opposition figures and economists point to the military’s growing control over the economy since the coup. of Sissi in 2013, who ousted the democratically elected government of Mohamed Morsi.
Sisi was triumphantly re-elected for a second term in the 2018 elections with 97% of the vote once morest a single candidate (himself a Sisi supporter), following all serious opposition candidates were arrested or excluded, including by the intimidation bias.
In 2019, constitutional amendments gave the 68-year-old former general the opportunity to run for two more terms and increased the length of the presidential term from four to six years.
Translated from English (original) by VECTranslation.
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