Researcher Michele Dunne has repeated the advice that was given by The Economist in one of its editorials calling al-Sisi not to run for the 2018 presidential elections.
Dunne, the researcher at Carnegie, wrote on her twitter account,” Suggestion from The Economist: al-Sisi should announce now he will not run in 2018, to allow politics to re-emerge.”
The Economist has recently mentioned this in its editorial titled: The Ruining of Egypt…Repression and the incompetence of al-Sisi are stoking the second uprising.”
The magazine said at the end of its editorial that the demographic, economic and social pressures in Egypt are relentlessly increasing and that al-Sisi is incapable of providing the sustainable stability to Egypt, the political regime also needs to be reopened.
The magazine continued saying, “Egypt’s political system needs to be reopened. A good place to start would be for al-Sisi to announce that he will not stand again for election in 2018.”
This comes in parallel with a petition signed for re-electing al-Sisi in 2018, the petition aims to collect 40 million signatures. (A similar move was conducted by “Tamarud” movement, supported by the army, when they planned to topple Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2013. At the time, it was announced that Tamarud was collecting millions of signatures against Morsi. Also, Tamaud received financial support from the UAE via the Egyptian army, according to leaks circulated in the media, allegedly from Al-Sisi’s office)
For his part, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Ahmed Abu Zeid, slammed The Economist’s article which strongly criticized Egypt’s economic situation.
Abu Zeid said in a statement, titled “The Ruining of The Economist” that the recently published article was void of objective analysis and defaulted to insulting Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.“The article is indeed awful. It is disgraceful that such a professional magazine resorts to using subjective, insulting, and politically motivated terms to characterize the economic policies of a country, attributing it solely to the head of state,” Abu Zeid said.
At the end, he said, “It is obvious that The Economist has chosen to take sides with those bent on undermining Egypt. We hope that in the interest of maintaining its credibility, reputation, and professionalism, The Economist will be less reductionist and biased in the future.”
