El-Sisi, a president after my heart

The fact that he is a field marshal and president of an ancient civilisation like Egypt makes his communication skills even more remarkable. Oratory and the ability to make the listener empathise with the speaker are not standard requirements of a modern soldier. When a man combines military astuteness with a good sense of public […]

The fact that he is a field marshal and president of an ancient civilisation like Egypt makes his communication skills even more remarkable. Oratory and the ability to make the listener empathise with the speaker are not standard requirements of a modern soldier. When a man combines military astuteness with a good sense of public relations, he can only be described — politically speaking — as a long-distance runner.
The single-minded way the former army chief hounded out Islamic Brotherhood from power and the speed with which he transmuted from soldier to statesman ought to have warned the watching world that Egypt was entering another phase in its age-long romance with destiny. A combination of benevolence towards the majority and ruthlessness towards the sectarian minority is what el-Sisi deploys to great effect to the pleasant surprise of PR professionals and those who wish his country well.
Egyptians have come a long way from the days of the Pharaohs and they are determined never to slide back to that era. They tolerated Hosni Mubarak for decades. When power fatigue set in, they poured into the streets calling on their former hero to quit. Mubarak ignored them for a few days and when he chose to acknowledge their grievances he literally chastised them with scorpions. In a two-hour diatribe broadcast in the unholy hour of midnight, he blamed every citizen but himself for the problems of his country, throwing in stiff warnings to imaginary ‘sponsors’ of the mass protests. He eventually fell and is now spending his old age in jail.
Mohamed Morsi of the Islamic Brotherhood became president in June 2012 following a gale of popularity enhanced by his oratory and undeniable charisma. Although many watchers of Egyptian politics had expressed fears about the fundamentalist tendencies of the Islamic Brotherhood, they were nonetheless prepared to give Morsi a chance because he seemed to represent the new face of his country. But they were dead wrong. No sooner had he entered office than he started alienating large sections of the populace with actions tending to reduce Egypt to a sectarian empire. Images of what had been alleged to be the fundamentalist master plan of Islamic Brotherhood flashed across the faces of his countrymen and women and they poured onto the streets in protest. Instead of allaying the fears of the people, he threatened to wipe out dissent, ignoring the warnings of the armed forces that Egypt was spiralling out of control. Like Mubarak, Morsi also fell and is now cooling his heels in jail.
When Abdel Fattah el-Sisi transmuted from army general to president on an Independent ticket, he told Egyptians that he would restore their pride and give them a new lease of economic prosperity. He cut the picture of a man determined to represent all of Egypt, not a section of it. One thing he did so well was COMMUNICATE. He knew how to reach out to the people via live broadcasts to tell them exactly what was happening and what he was planning to do — or was already doing.
One of the biggest tests of his young presidency occurred last week when Egyptians again poured unto the streets to protest massive power failures which caused blackouts and halted some public transport, including the underground metro, in some parts of the country. Power outage had been one of the problems that brought Morsi down.
The old state-run infrastructure is increasingly overstressed and incapable of shouldering the responsibility of meeting the electricity demands of a rapidly growing economy in a land of 85 million people. Dwindling local production of gas in recent years has also exacerbated the problem leading to failure to meet domestic demand and export commitments. Hospitals suffered during the outages which left dialysis machines, X-ray machines and operation rooms out of service.
The outage began at 6am, causing paralysis in many areas across the country, including the Nile Delta and southern provinces. Nearly 12 hours later, electricity officials said they had restored 85 percent of the lost power.
What el-Sisi decided to do differently from his predecessors in the face of the same problem was  to communicate with the people. He promptly went on air even as the protests were going on to tell the people that he shared their pain and was determined to solve the power generation and distribution problems in the long run. In a rare display of candour he told fellow citizens that there was no quick fix to the problem and that there were many more dark days ahead.
He revealed that Egypt needs no less than 130 billion Egyptian pounds in the next five years to develop the electricity sector to meet the population’s current needs. Disclosing that the government was dealing with investors to get the required funding to tackle the crisis, he reminded his listeners that the country’s electricity sector had suffered from decades of neglect and that the power plants needed major rehabilitation.
“This will not be solved soon,” he said. “We are facing many challenges and no government or president will be able to overcome them alone.”
When I heard el-Sisi appeal to his people for patience in the face of daunting problems, I felt he had earned their confidence. What more could a people ask of their leader apart from openness and prompt reaction to their complaints?
From a PR standpoint, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is a good advertisement for Africa. There are good lessons to be learnt from the responsiveness of a leader under pressure. I haven’t seen any analysis in the global media yet about how the problems of Egypt are being handled; maybe because no throats have been slit in the fashion of Boko Haram and ISIS?
When things go wrong in any part of Africa we are duty bound to say so. In the same vein, when we notice positive behaviour we have no business ignoring it. It is good to have a massive PR machine behind a president but in the final analysis the best PR for any president is the president himself. If he continues along the two-way communication highway in his stewardship, el-Sisi may eventually turn out to be what the doctor recommended for Africa’s cradle of civilisation.