El-Sisi Begins His Presidential Reign By a Bicycle Ride in Egypt - How Appropriately Symbolic!!

By leading a bicycle marathon in Cairo, President El-Sisi was sending multiple appropriate signals: the importance of the safety of the Egyptian street; the need to conserve energy in order to reduce subsidies; and the willingness to make governmental pragmatism a national cause.

There is another added symbolism in that bicycle marathon.  Nowhere have we ever seen in the Arab world a head of state on a bicycle.  For generations, we have been accustomed to watch from a distance a long caravan of black limos with tinted glass windows, surrounded by sirens and a host of motorcycles signaling the ultra-speedy movement of the Head of State on his country's streets.  So you had to take a double look at that youthful Egyptian President on his bicycle, surrounded by sportsmen as if you were watching a scene from a Scandinavian country, not an Arab State.

Am I here romanticising the significance of that El-Sisi presidential parade?  You bet I am.  And why not if I were to link that symbol of pragmatism to this new era of Egypt's struggle to regain its composure and sanity after 3 very long troublesome years.

So here is more welcome symbolisms:

• Egypt is in sore need for housing.  So who is now its Prime Minister?  Dr. Ibrahim Mehlib, a former Minister of Housing.
• Egypt's Ministry of Information has existed in the midst of multiple codes of professional conduct for the media, and numerous official spokesman for nearly all the other ministries.  Redundancy, and no appreciable impact on the flow, style or analysis of public information in or about Egypt.  Result: Disbanding that ministry from the line-up of 31 Cabinet portfolios.
• Prior to El-Sisi presidency, there was a ministry for "Transitional Justice," charged with dealing with integrating personnel of prior regimes.  It has to do with inclusiveness within a framework of the Rule of Law.  Result: Because it straddles the portfolios of justice, human rights, and civil liberties, that ministry has also been disbanded.  Its replacement is a Board, or a Council on which various shades of opinion shall be represented.
• An uptick has occurred in the ugly phenomenon of sexual assault by hordes of young men against females in public places.  Prior to the transfer of power to El-Sisi, Judge Adly Mansour, the interim president, had toughened the laws applicable to this heinous crime.  

Yet on the day of that transfer of power, a massive attack against a young woman took place in Tahrir Square generating public revulsion all over Egypt .  Consequently, one of the first public acts by President El-Sisi was to visit the victim and her family at the hospital.  The new president did not only offer the victim roses.  He publicly expressed apologies and in a blunt language promised that the newly promulgated laws shall be enforced in full measure.

• In regard to Africa, several commentators noted the absence of several Heads of State from the festivities of El-Sisi installation as President earlier this month.  They saw in this a sign of a low ebb in Cairo relations with Africa.  Even those five African Heads of State who took part, including Chad, Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea were impunged by those commentators.  Their take on this was that those presidents came to power in coups similar to what they perceived to have been the path of El-Sisi to power.

Nonsense.  It is the same old story of whether the Second Egyptian Revolution of June 30, 2013 represented "a coup" or a legitimate popular recall of Morsi.  What these commentators gloss over is that in the new Egypt, the old Nasserite way of thrusting the nose of Egypt into the internal affairs of its neighbors -Africa and Arab- is over.  Those days are gone, thanks to the pragmatic priorities in foreign policy for the new Egypt.  The summit level of representation of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Kuwait (present sources of funding of the transition in Egypt) and Jordan, meant, more in practical terms, to the Egypt of El-Sisi.

In addition, the suspension of Egypt's membership in the African Union, a symbolic bow to the faulty "coup" argument, played a part in the absence of several African Heads of State and Government.  Now this suspension is over, and Egypt, as a Charter member since 1963 of African unity, whatever that means, is back to that African conclave.  Its primary goal is mending relations with Ethiopia in regard to her share, together with the Sudan, of Nile water.

The disparaging comments on El-Sisi's installation as president fall in what I call "the Law of Anticipated Reactions."  That is the law of "leap to faulty conclusions, then ponder!!"

• Behind all these symbols of the pragmism of the new Egypt are hard realities.  Some of these realities are domestic, and some are external as discussed above.  A tectonic shift in foreign policy in the Egypt of El-Sisi has taken place.  It denotes staying clear from armed conflicts either in the backyards or the frontyards of your neighbors.  Leaders with military experience like El-Sisi are usually the best assessors of the high price of war in both blood and treasure.  Egypt's developmental decline began with Nasser's wars.
• With the containment of Islamism in Egypt, and with the daily assertion of national sovereignty and security in Sinai, through, among other measures, keeping Hamas at bay, Egypt is now pivoting in one essential and logical direction: Egypt.  
• Let us here look at how the present Obama doctrine and the emerging El-Sisi doctrine are largely similar.  The two leaders seem to be seeing the world through the same prism: "Unless the homeland is directly threatened, no boots on the ground or bombs from the air shall be employed beyond national borders." 

Endless wars have caused both Cairo and Washington, D.C. retardation at home.  For Obama, building America's infrastructure has greater priority than building Afghanistan super-structure.  For El-Sisi, Hamas and the Brotherhood are terrorist organizations which should be repulsed in order to develop Egypt and keep the peace with Israel.

Both the U.S. and Egypt are now pivoting toward Asia, with America toward the pacific and Egypt towards Sinai.  As Cairo has downgraded the cause of pan-Arabism in favor of Egyptianism, D.C. has abandoned the cause of fighting other peoples' wars, whether in Libya, Syria or Iraq which is now on the verge of sectarian civil war and dismemberment.

It should not escape our attention that for the foreign affairs portfolio of the new Egypt, an able Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nabil Fahmy, has been replaced by an equally able new Cabinet member: Sameh Shukri.  Shukri has been plucked from his post as Ambassador to the U.S. for managing a different Egyptian foreign policy: warmth towards America with equal openness to other world and regional powers.  That is in spite of the recent misguided U.S. benign outlook on the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate and peaceful opposition.

In conclusion, this blogger says to President El-Sisi: 

We applaud your riding a bicycle in the streets of Cairo as an impetus for the security of the Egyptian street and for the development of Egypt through energy conversation.  Better riding a bicycle at home than riding a tank crossing over other national boundaries.

In the presently tumultously and fractured Middle East, peace is a strategic path to prosperity at home.

By His Farewell Speech to Egypt As Its Outgoing Interim President, Judge Adly Mansour Redefined His Homeland

How did Justice Adly Mansour, Egypt's interim President bid the public "farewell" on June 3, 2014 so that El-Sisi assumes his rightful post as the legitimate successor?  Here follows an analysis from the original highly articulated Arabic, translated by this blogger in the form of highlights:

• The great Egyptian public, through exercising their right to vote in that presidential election in May, have manifested a keen political sense.  They proved that they were truly worthy of their great Egypt;
• The Egyptians observance of discipline as they voted for their choice of the next President (El-Sisi won by a landslide against Sabbahi) has made Mansour proud to be an Egyptian;
• The greatness of the homeland is anchored in its historically being the world's crossroads, the Locus of revealed religions, the cradle of civilization, the fount of arts, the locus of distinctive architecture, and the bridge between 3 of the world's continents;
• Egypt is the beacon of Africa's freedom, the gift of the Nile, the owner of the Suez Canal, the host of Al-Azhar and the great Coptic Church.  Egypt is defined in four ways: An Arab, an African, an Islamic, and a Mediterranean State;
• After evoking "the genius of it's geographic location," he turned to the low ebb at present in the fortunes of revolutionary Egypt, by affirming that after darkness there shall be light.  The country's youth are its vanguard and its pulsing heart.  June 30 was a date not to be forgotten in the turnaround of Egyptian fortunes.  That Second Revolution, sparked by popular will, would not have succeeded without the backing of the military and the police.
• "At that critical juncture, it was the Egyptian people who brought me to be their interim president.  History shall register that it was the citizens who had kept the oldest State in recorded history from collapse.  Since the Pharaoh Narmer (Mena), southern Egypt and northern Egypt had been forever united, not to be split asunder by those who had been forced out of power in July 2013."  No mention by name of the Muslim Brotherhood.  There was no need to include their name in Mansour's farewell speech.
• Looking at the security and economic bottomless chasm which Adly Mansour peered at upon assuming his one year of transitional presidency, he said: "Egypt is a body which has been for decades exhausted by political confusion."  Yet within three years, its public rose against two failed regimes (again without naming either Mubarak or Morsi).  A period of decay during which both faith and country became the preserve of monopolists who led it into political and economic deadends followed by blind terrorism determined to impose its distorted vision on both Muslim and Coptic Egypt.  A total mischaracterization of both.
• Turning to the help and encouragement given by friendly sister Arab States, he saluted Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Hashenite Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Palestine.
• As to those States which used the stressful period of transitional Egypt to denigrate it or to interfere into its internal affairs, Adly Mansour, in an even tone that shed light not heat said: "To the other camp, I say: Egypt is as old as history.  With God's help, it shall stand forever tall with you or without you.  Like it or not, be advised that Egypt is making a historic come back.  Your persistence in moving along your wrong path shall only make corrections more costly."
• Addressing his successor, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, he said: "Today, I turn Egypt's rulership, which has been entrusted to me for a year, to the next president who has been chosen by the voice of the people.  I turn to him a State which has a Constitution, a democratically-elected President, and very soon with an elected Parliament.  It is a State destined to regain its place and role internationally, both economic and political."
• Harking back tot he past 3 years when international aid was offered at the price of Egypt's dignity and its sovereign right to decision-making, he affirmed: "Never again shall anyone bargain with this nation on it dignity for a loaf of bread or on its security for the price of freedom.  This is now a country whose wealth shall be dedicated to its citizens.  It security shall be ensured by its responsible practice of freedom within the framework of loyalty to the homeland.  In this regard we must beware of special interest groups whose greed obfuscates facts and produces an atmosphere of opportunism."
• As a former President of the Supreme Constitutional Court (which the Islamists regime was bent on its destruction), Adly Mansour addressed El-Sisi saying: "Mr. President, I state before you and before all of Egypt that the judiciary is the impenetrable citadel of justice, which it administers without fear or regard to material benefits.  Our new Constitution has provided for its independence.  Justice is the pillar on which governance rests.  And human rights, in its broadest meaning, also covers economic development which should, in time, extend to southern Egypt, Sinai, the western desert, the triangle of Halayeb and Shalatin (adjoining the borders of the Sudan)."
• Faith, Adly Mansour declared in his farewell address, must be rediscovered as a comprehensive movement for enlightenment.  It should not affect morals and values only.  It should uplift the level of popular culture and style.  In this enlightenment movement, our writers, poets, journalists, artists and innovations should warn against the pitfalls of prejudice and the aversion towards "the other."
• Ending up his historic farewell speech, Judge Adly Mansour addressed the Coptic community.  He said, "Coptic Egypt is an integral part of this blessed country.  To the Copts I say that  your contributions to the strength  of the texture of the Egyptian nation have been limitless.  Your blood in Sinai was mixed with the blood of your Muslim brethren in the defense of the common homeland."
• Then he continued: Your great sons and daughters continue to enrich Egypt.  No one can forget the late great Pope Shenouda III, the late Makram Obeid, Fouad Aziz Ghali, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Kamal El-Mallakh, Dr. Louis Awad; Dr. Younan Rizk, Dr. Magdy Yacoub -all luminous Egyptians in whose contributions we shall forever revel.  This is especially so during the 1919 uprising against British occupation whose symbol shall forever be the Crescent and the Cross in an eternal embrace.

Devoting this blog posting to that farewell speech has behind it a historic reason: No such speech symbolizing the peaceful transfer of power has ever been delivered to the Egyptians.  It is an iconic occasion not to be lost in the avalanche of daily news.  By that speech of June 3, 2014, Judge Adly Mansour has redefined his homeland and its mission.