Sisi to swear in as Egypt president for third time

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is set to officially commence his third term in the headquarters of the presidential palace in the New Administrative Capital on Tuesday following a swearing-in ceremony at the lower house of the parliament.

Sisi’s inauguration will mark the opening of the first phase of the controversial mega project of the new capital, local news outlets reported on Sunday.

The move comes amid, arguably, the toughest economic crisis the North African country has ever sustained in modern history and widespread criticism of public spending on white elephant projects including the new capital which cost Egypt about $US 60 billion.

In December last year, Sisi was reelected for a third term as president winning 89.6 percent of the vote, a contest arguably witnessing the absence of high-profile candidates and overshadowed by Israel’s brutal onslaught on the neighbouring Palestinian Gaza Strip.

The country’s constitution was amended in 2019 to extend the presidential term to six years from four, which allowed Sisi to run for a final term in 2030.

Economists believe that severe economic mismanagement has further o played a significant role in Egypt's current predicament, particularly with Sisi’s government investing billions of dollars in "white elephant" projects, including the new capital.

The New Administrative Capital has been under construction since 2015 in a desert area, about 45 east of the capital Cairo, and has much sparked criticism since then. It is intended to become the country's financial and administrative centre to relieve overcrowding in Cairo.

In addition to housing the cabinet and the main state organisations, the New Administrative Capital is expected to also house foreign embassies, an airport, and hundreds of medical and educational facilities.

Upon completion, the project is also expected to house foreign embassies, an airport, medical and educational facilities, almost 6.5 million residents, and around 50.000 public servants.

However, the exaggerated value of residential units in the New Administrative Capital made them out of the reach of average-income households in a country where about one-third of the almost 109 million population is under the poverty line.

 In April last year, Sisi was slammed for building an extravagant record-breaking mosque in the New Administrative Capital, a 19,000 square-metre building that cost 800 million Egyptian pounds, equipped to host over 100 worshipers at a time.

Egypt's external debt soared by 5.1 per cent during the fourth quarter of 2022, reaching US$162.94 billion, a total of US$10 billion more than the previous quarter.

Amid economic challenges, foreign debts, and a significant budget deficit, Egypt has also been aggressively pursuing the sale of state assets to address its financial woes, being an easy way out, such as the recently signed Ras El-Hekma deal with the UAE.

Earlier this month, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) imposed an exchange rate flexibility, allowing the value of the Egyptian pound to be regulated by market forces as an attempt to alleviate an already ailing economy mostly dependent on the importation of essential commodities, especially wheat, rather than local production.