The Sisi Police State

Egypt held a presidential election last month. The New York Times' Declan Walsh published a handful of stories on the election. Walsh is a notable reporter in that he was kicked out of Pakistan by the government in 2013.

Egyptian strongman Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi won reelection with 97% of the vote. It is worthwhile to note that when inveighing against the rise of the autocrat and the death of democracy opinion leaders rarely mention el-Sisi or Prayut Chan-o-cha, the Thai prime minister and leader of the military junta that rules Thailand, preferring instead to descry Hungary's Viktor Orban, Russia's Vladimir Putin or Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.

As Walsh reminds us in a story published yesterday, "Egyptian Military Court Sentences Sisi Critic to 5 Years in Prison," Sisi's Egypt is an authoritarian police state edging close to territory occupied by the Gulf sheikhdoms in terms of repression:

CAIRO — A military court on Tuesday sentenced a former government anticorruption czar to five years in prison over incendiary claims about documents said to incriminate Egypt’s leaders, his lawyers and state news media said.

The sentence levied against the official, Hisham Geneina, who had served under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi until 2016 when he became one of the president’s sharpest critics, signaled that the harsh crackdown on the opposition that preceded last month’s election was set to continue.

Mr. Geneina was one of several opposition figures detained before the vote, effectively clearing the field for Mr. Sisi, who ultimately faced a single token candidate and won with 97 percent of valid votes. All of the opposition figures remain in jail, including Sami Anan, a former army chief whose campaign lasted four days before he was arrested.

Walsh goes on to list, one after another, the people Sisi has jailed.

After the Tamarod hocus pocus that paved the way for the military coup and Sisi's toppling of Morsi, I imagined that this would be the drift. Repressive strongman rule. The U.S. accepts it when it is an ally; bemoans it when it is an adversary..