Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

The result of the Egyptian presidential election is a foregone conclusion; it was the style that was supposed to count. The disappointing voter turnout and underhanded methods to increase it have former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi beginning his reign with a whimper, not a bang.

However, in time, this lackluster showing may fade as events dictate Sisi’s popularity going forward. If he is able to achieve some positive results domestically and can leverage support from supporters in the Gulf, the West, and Russia, it may be enough to allow him to remain in power for many years.
This of course, is if the Islamist insurgency does not assassinate him first.

Shadi Hamid, author of the new book, Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East and a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told The Jerusalem Post that the low turnout should not be surprising “considering the predetermined result and the lack of any meaningful competition.”

Some in the government have been surprised by the low turnout, “leading to a kind of panic,” said Hamid.

“The dissonance here is striking: claiming that Sisi has overwhelming popular support, when the polling queues tell a rather different story,” he explained.

“This is not the kind of dissonance any autocratic order wants to deal with, and it raises serious questions about the general tendency to overstate Sisi's support from day one.”

“There is no real place for the ‘citizen’ in Sisi's Egypt, except as an instrument of the Egyptian State,” he added.

Asked what he sees happening next, Hamid responded that the Muslim Brotherhood will claim victory and that their boycott succeeded. The group will continue playing the role of “spoiler,” and making the country “ungovernable in the hope that the lack of stability and security will undermine Sisi's base of support.”

It is difficult to have any kind of stability when a large sector of the population is being completely excluded “and has no stake in the process and nothing to lose,” concluded Hamid.

Samuel Tadros, a research fellow at the Hudson Institutes’s Center for Religious Freedom, told the Post that Sisi “raised the bar tremendously when he talked about 40 million voters participating” and that “such talk was unrealistic and has further raised expectations.”

“In these two days, unrealistic expectations have met reality” and “this likely to be a continuous feature of a Sisi presidency,” he said.

Tadros believes that Sisi is ill equipped to run the country and that his tendency to be overly optimistic could cause future disappointment.

Sisi’s vote total will far exceed that of former president Mohamed Morsi from two years ago, predicted Tadros, noting that the election will essentially formalize Sisi’s regime, which has in effect already been ruling the country for the past year.

Tadros sees little chance for a compromise political solution between the Muslim Brotherhood and Sisi after the elections since “too much blood has been spilled and the two parties' positions remain as far apart as ever.”

“The challenges facing the new regime in Egypt will continue to grow; from terrorism in the Sinai and beyond, the beginnings of a low level insurgency in the cities, a catastrophic economic situation and political polarization.”

Another factor Tadros raises is that the Brotherhood and other Islamists continue to incite against Copt Christians as in previous elections. “Brotherhood Facebook pages have claimed that 48 percent of voters in this elections are Copts, an absurd claim,” he said adding, “Attacks on Copts are likely to continue in the future.”

Professor Abdallah Schleifer, a Cairo-based columnist for the Al-Arabiya news website, told the Post said that aside from the organized boycott by Islamist forces, “the turnout has been low because the weather is so bad; temperatures ranging around 40 C and above.”

For Israel, its interest lies Sisi’s ability to bring stability and economic improvement to Egypt, the most important Arab state, Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), told the Post.