Sisi vows legislative polls by year's end after delay
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has pledged to hold parliamentary elections in the country before the end of the year, after the vote was called off last month and indefinitely postponed.
"I give my word: they will be held before the end of the year," Sisi said in an interview with Spanish daily El Mundo published Wednesday on the eve of an official visit to Spain.
Egypt's first legislative polls following the rise of the country’s former military chief to presidency were set to be held on March 21 and run through May 7 but were put on hold after the constitutional court ruled that parts of the nation’s electoral law was “unconstitutional.”
Sisi ran for presidency in 2014 after overthrowing Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in July 2013, which was followed by the killing and jailing of thousands of Morsi's supporters.
While many critics accuse Sisi of establishing an authoritarian rule by effectively eliminating all opposition, he claimed without elaborating in the interview that he has prevented Egypt from descending into a civil war.
"I faced a difficult equation: my role is to guarantee life and security of 90 million Egyptians who faced the risk of chaos. If I let anything be done, is it Europe that would pay the salaries of Egyptians?" Sisi asserted.
"Don't judge me without taking into account the reality on the ground," he said, adding, "If the state collapses, that would cause terrible harm to Europe and the region would face a disaster. Egypt is not Iraq, or Syria or Yemen, nations that each has over 20 million residents. We are 90 million.”
The Egyptian president, however, declined to respond to a question on the 20-year sentence handed down to Morsi by a court in Cairo last week over the deaths and torture of demonstrators outside his presidential palace some three years ago.
The Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Morsi came to power following Egypt’s 2011 revolution that ousted longtime US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak. But just after a year in office, Morsi was overthrown by then-army chief Sisi.
At least 1,400 Morsi supporters were killed by Egyptian soldiers and police officers after he was toppled from power. More than 15,000 Morsi backers were imprisoned and hundreds were sentenced to death.
MFB/HMV/SS
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