Egypt's Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
© Reuters

Egypt’s authorities are meticulously preparing a glorious election that will elevate the former military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to the presidency in a burst of popular approval. No obstacle, big or small, can stand in the way of a stage-managed show that must look like a return to a democratic path.

That is why Bassem Youssef, the country’s best-known comedian, has just been taken off the air until after the end of the May presidential vote. The Saudi-backed television station that airs his show has given him a holiday so as to “avoid influencing Egyptian voters’ orientation and public opinion”, as it put it.

Mr Youssef indeed is a spoiler: he has been poking fun at a poll with a foregone conclusion and ridiculing the cult of personality of Mr Sisi, the leader of the July coup that swept aside an elected Islamist president.

Mr Sisi’s election might be a tragedy for Egypt but, sadly, it is not a joke. At stake is the legitimisation of the nation’s new authoritarianism, which will also pave the way for sceptical western governments to normalise relations with Cairo.

If you ignore the environment in which the election is taking place – prisons teeming with Islamists, courts competing to throw many more members of the Muslim Brotherhood behind bars, and a public and private media that promote Mr Sisi as the saviour and brand Islamists as terrorists – the poll might even look real.

The field marshal – who removed his military uniform last month and was recently spotted in an Adidas tracksuit riding his Peugeot bicycle around town – is adored by many Egyptians fed up with the chaos that followed the 2011 revolution and bitterly disappointed by the brief rule of the Islamists.

Never mind that he is returning Egypt to a state that is more repressive than the era of Hosni Mubarak, the autocrat ousted in February 2011. Or that the fierce nationalism he embodies is a throwback to the 1950s and 1960s. A strongman determined to restore the prestige of the state, say many Egyptians today, is what the country needs.

Mr Sisi’s election will give western governments a necessary justification to turn the page on the July coup and all the bloodshed and repression that followed. Since the military intervention that the US could not bring itself to call a coup, western policy towards Egypt has been on hold. Essentially it was outsourced to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which loathe the Muslim Brotherhood and have deployed their petrodollars to keep Cairo financially afloat.

In western capitals we have heard very little public criticism of the Egyptian authorities, even if officials privately acknowledge the country is headed on the wrong path. The most notable reaction in recent weeks has been in the UK where, to the delight of the Egyptian regime, the government in London announced an inquiry into Muslim Brotherhood activities in Britain. The EU, meanwhile, is sending observers to monitor the presidential vote, as if it were a real contest.

True, Egypt is too important to be ignored and, for western governments, the return of the old order after three years of confusion carries a certain appeal. Democracy in the Arab world has proved too messy. That autocracy provided only a veneer of stability that eventually shattered under the weight of festering grievances has already been forgotten.

Mr Sisi might have staying power because the military and security state that helped to eliminate Mr Mubarak and Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist president, are firmly on his side. His oil-rich backers, too, are determined to see him succeed.

But a word of caution against a rush to embrace him: over the past three years Egypt has proved unpredictable, its popular mood fickle and its people unforgiving. Egyptians have turned against everyone who has tried to rule them.

With time, the limits of Mr Sisi’s ability to improve Egypt’s faltering economy will become apparent. As will the flaws in his policy of eradication of Islamists. Political Islam can be countered only with a combination of inclusion of mainstream Islamists and promotion of more liberal-leaning political alternatives – a pluralism that Mr Sisi has been unwilling to countenance. Nothing suggests that, once “elected”, he will transform into a democrat.

roula.khalaf@ft.com

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