The Israeli war in neighboring Gaza left its mark on the Egyptian presidential election.

Presidential elections are taking place in Egypt. It is expected that the winner will be the current head of state Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. But, as Western media note, the Egyptian president’s position on neighboring Gaza is evident in a country suffering from poverty, corruption and inflation.

For Egyptians, the only signs that elections are imminent are posters of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi plastered on every accessible wall and billboard across the country, writes the British publication The Observer.

Repetitive images of Cece – always looking into the distance with a tight smile – are so common that people have turned to the only place they have left for free expression and have started creating memes out of them to share online. In one of the circulated photos, Jack and Rose from the movie Titanic are sitting on the deck of the ship, surrounded by Sisi’s election posters. On another, people joke that a pregnant woman passed out so many pictures of Cece on her way to work that her newborn baby looked like the sitting president.

Since seizing power in a military coup in 2013, Sisi has twice won presidential elections with 97% of the vote, the last of which he ran against a candidate who had openly supported his rule. In what has become a familiar situation, the only potential candidate representing the real opposition was also not allowed to run this time.

“Everyone is really thinking about what’s happening in Gaza,” said Mohamed Lotfi of the rights group Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF). “There is no hope that this election will bring anything new other than a third mandate for Sisi, so this is a kind of recognition.” Other candidates are not running to win – everyone understands that they are running because they hope to gain political support in the future.”

“The elections ended a long time ago! laughs Mohammed Anwar al-Sadat, the nephew of Egypt’s former president and a longtime political bigwig whose career has included expulsion from parliament, a short-lived election campaign in 2018 and involvement in negotiations helping to free some of Egypt’s tens of thousands of prisoners. – Now everything depends on the level of turnout, that is, on what Sisi gets: these are elections. Otherwise, in my opinion, it’s all over. Of course, there are three more candidates, but they are only here to make the overall picture look attractive. They are not real competitors.”

According to The Observer, Sisi has long argued that opposition rule would lead to the country’s downfall, while promising that his many glitzy megaprojects, including the expansion of the Suez Canal and a shiny new capital on the outskirts of Cairo, would bring prosperity. The reality has been stark, with the government itself estimating that around a third of Egypt’s population lives in poverty, while inflation has nearly exceeded 40% this year and food inflation is even higher.

“Don’t dare say that you would rather eat than build and progress,” Sisi said in a speech in October. “If the price of a nation’s progress and prosperity is hunger and thirst, then let us not eat or drink.”

Sisi’s rule has combined austerity measures for the population with lavish spending within a regime where only the president and a few of his closest cronies wield power, notably his notorious intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, who led hostage negotiations with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, and his son Mahmoud al-Sisi, who is also a senior security official.

Most Egyptians are very concerned about Israel’s attack on Gaza, just across the border in Sinai, which has long remained closed amid unprecedentedly warm relations with Israel, including Sisi’s open meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Despite this, Sisi has bypassed a long-standing ban on public protests and designated a single day and specific locations for public demonstrations in support of Gaza in an attempt to deal with public anger. The plan backfired when crowds of demonstrators marched into Cairo’s Tahrir Square, site of the 2011 uprising, demanding the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak. 115 people were detained in Cairo and Alexandria. To date, 67 people remain under investigation on charges ranging from violating the anti-protest law to terrorism, The Observer writes.

Despite Egypt’s role in the hostage negotiations providing some international influence, Sisi’s failure to manage the situation in Gaza risks exposing the fragility of his rule at home. “For the government, this is a double-edged sword: it wants to de-escalate the situation because it means tension within the country and frustration that the state is not able to do more than what it is already doing,” analysts say. “The more pictures of explosions, the more angry the public gets, including at the government for being so powerless in terms of not wanting to force Israel to open its borders and let in more aid. They need to be shown that they have a role to play in enforcing a ceasefire and not moving Palestinians into Sinai.”