Egyptian media outlets hailed the Sunday inauguration of the country’s former military chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as a victory for democracy and the rule of law, even as various Western powers continued to respond with something less than warmth to last month’s election, which saw Sisi win 97% of the popular vote.
Publishing under a staff byline, Al Arabiya opened by declaring that “For the first time in Egypt’s history an outgoing president has peacefully handed out power to an elected leader”:
A historical handing over ceremony between outgoing interim President Adly Mansour and Egyptian president-elect Abdel Fatah al Sisi took place on Sunday at Egypt’s Ittihadeya palace in the Heliopolis district. The “unprecedented” ceremony in Egypt’s modern political history saw both men signing the “handover of power document” in the presence of dozens of local and foreign dignitaries.
“Let us differ for the sake of our nation and not over it, and in a unifying national march in which every party listens to the other,” Sisi said before thanking the outgoing interim president.
Mansour – whom the outlet noted is “known by some as the ‘man of the law'” and will not take back his post as chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court – became the only president in modern Egyptian history to leave his post voluntarily.
Reuters noted however that the West has continued to be cool to Sisi, who last year led army moves that ousted the country’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked former president Mohammed Morsi amid unprecedented mass demonstrations calling for the resignation of Morsi’s Islamist government:
In an inauguration ceremony with low-key attendance by Western allies concerned by a crackdown on dissent, the former army chief called for hard work and the development of freedom “in a responsible framework away from chaos”.
Al-Monitor revealed last week that the Obama administration has continued to withhold counter-terrorism assets from Cairo, which have been partially frozen over concerns stemming from the overthrow and the interim government’s subsequent actions against the Brotherhood. The freeze has been blasted by analysts from across the ideological spectrum for among other things abandoning seven decades of bipartisan U.S. policies aimed building alliances that would block out Russia and other rivals from the Middle East.
Washington Institute Managing Director Michael Singh two weeks ago outlined ways to restabilize U.S.-Egyptian relations, while warning that “Egypt has had the upper hand in the relationship despite its troubles, mainly because it believes it can turn to others to meet its needs in the short run — Russia for military equipment, the Persian Gulf states for aid, and the international community for validation. Washington, in contrast, has no geopolitical substitute for Egypt.”
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