Sisi's camouflage campaign unravels in election's final hours
Despite his imminent victory, the mirage campaign of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his supporters was shown to be a failure by the embarrassingly low voter turnout.
For those following the Egyptian media in the weeks leading up to the presidential elections, the sense that Egypt was about to have a god as its next president was inescapable.
In televised interviews with Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, journalists would not only avoid pressing Sisi on any issue, they would respond to all his answers with complete awe, acting at times as if his evasion of questions represented a silence that spoke louder than words. In Sisi's final interview, media personality Naila Omara even told him that she would be “afraid to be questioned by him on Judgment Day.” These media reports were propaganda in its lowest form and the only campaigning Sisi engaged in — the only campaigning that he needed, his supporters enthusiastically claimed.
The Sisi campaign compensated for its non-campaigning with an overreliance on the media and the propagation of inevitability with regard to Sisi’s election. This proved to be a huge strategic mistake; in any election, a lack of competition usually leads to low voter turnout, which is precisely what happened the first day of voting. The air of inevitability turned people off.
Egyptians felt that Sisi would win anyway — that he needed their votes like the Saudis needed charitable donations. The lack of campaigning and the absence of any voter turnout strategy — besides having media heads scream at their audience to go and vote — didn’t help matters much either. All the people who stated that Sisi did not need a campaign were suddenly eating crow.
