ONCE reluctant to appear in the media, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s top general (pictured), is now very much seeking the limelight, perhaps because he would like to run for president. A recent video of him addressing army officers appeared to be shot for public consumption and duly went viral. His spokesman has said that although the general was not yet standing for office there was nothing to prevent him from so doing if he retired from the army.
Egypt’s press has started comparing Mr Sisi to Gamal Abdul Nasser, the hero-general who eventually became president after deposing the country’s last monarch in 1952. Protesters who helped the army to end the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood last month have plastered the streets with posters of the army chief. Many see him as a font of the dignity and security which they feel Egypt has lacked since Nasser’s time. “It is very clear he is entertaining the idea of the presidency,” says Robert Springborg, an expert in the Egyptian armed forces at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Egypt’s army: Ambitious men in uniform | The Economist
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