Sisi did not seize power in Egypt

I would like to refer to the article published in your esteemed Herald newspaper on Friday February 14, 2014 under the title of “Egypt’s Sisi negotiates arms deals with Russia”.
The article referred to the outcome of the important visit by Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of Egypt, and Mr Nabil Fahmy, Foreign Minister of Egypt to Russia on February 13-14, 2014. The article also inferred that it had acquired its information from the Russian News Agency, RIA Novosti.

However, despite the source of information that the article depended on, there are several misconceptions that were clear in the article and that I would like to correct to your esteemed readers;

First, the article pointed out that this was the first time abroad for Field Marshall El-Sisi following his seizure of power in a coup last year.

Here I would like to correct this information by saying that Field Marshal Sisi did not seize power in Egypt as he is currently only a member of the Egyptian government with the title of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence.

Egypt has a political leadership represented by its interim President H.E. Mr Adly Mansour. As well as the Head of Government H. E. Dr Hazem ElBeblawy, Prime Minister of Egypt. Therefore Field Marshal El-Sisi is NOT considered until now as the leader of Egypt.

However, El-Sisi is expected to present his candidature to the next presidential election in Egypt due to be held around the month of April 2014, although he had not officially done so at the time of writing this letter.

Millions of people in Egypt have called for El-Sisi to nominate himself for the presidency as he was considered by millions of Egyptians as a national hero after he opted to support the popular revolution that erupted all over Egypt on June 30 2013 when around 30 million Egyptians went to the streets to call for ex-president Mohamed Morsi to step down and hold new presidential elections after the complete failure of his regime which was about – in just after one year – to lead the country to a very dark tunnel after deterioration affected all fields of life in Egypt due to Morsi’s incompetence and lack of political vision and will. If El-Sisi hadn’t acted as he did in supporting the popular revolution of June 30 and deposed president Morsi with the approval of all major political trends and powers of Egypt with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies, Egypt could have easily turned into another Syria and become a country torn by civil war, which would have led to an even more deteriorated security situation in the Middle East.

Secondly, the article also mentioned that the “often violent crackdown unleashed by the El-Sisi government has provoked a cooling in relations with Washington”. Here I would like to point out that the Egyptian government has not started by using violence against the demonstrators affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood group but when the demonstrators were bearing arms and started shooting live ammunition at police forces, the police definitely had to defend themselves.

It is very evident for any follower of Egyptian political affairs that Egypt is fighting a war against terrorism unleashed by the Muslim Brotherhood group and its collaborators against the Egyptian state and its people, and we hear on the news every day innocent people are falling victim to those terrorist attacks.

The last and not least of these cowardly attacks is the one that took place a few days ago on a bus full of Korean tourists in which a bomb exploded aboard the bus, and these terrorists did not care about any loss of human life for the sake of hurting the Egyptian economy which depends to a significant extent, on tourism revenues.

Finally, let me assure your esteemed readers that the Egyptian state and its people will ultimately defeat those cowardly terrorists and that Egypt will remain as the pillar and safe haven of democracy, security and freedom in the Middle East as it has always been since the cradle of civilisation.