Tuesday, April 2, marked the inauguration of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s third six-year term in Egypt. He was re-elected in December, a vote in which he had no significant opposition.
El-Sissi took the oath of office in front of the parliament, which met in the desert outside of Cairo, the new administrative capital.
Egypt, which just worked out an agreement with the IMF, is facing an economic crisis and has experienced a drop in dollar revenues from the Suez Canal compared to the previous year due to ship attacks in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthis.
“Between the evil terrorist attempts at home, the sudden global crises abroad, and the fierce international and regional wars around us, we are forced to confront challenges that may not have been encountered on this scale and severity throughout Egypt’s modern history,” El-Sissi told lawmakers.
In the election held in December, he received 89.6% of the vote, with 66.8% of the total 67 million registered voters casting ballots. He faced out against three essentially unknown rivals.
After deposing Islamist Mohamed Morsi in a democratic election, El-Sissi went on to win his first election in 2014.
In 2018, he was reelected. El-Sissi’s second term was extended by two years and he was granted the opportunity to run for a third, six-year term when constitutional revisions were approved in a public referendum a year later.
