US says it looks forward to working with Sisi, raises concerns

The United States government is looking forward to working with Egypt’s President-elect Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, but has concerns over the country’s restrictive political environment, it said in a statement published by the White House today.

President Barack Obama, who is traveling in Europe, will speak with Sisi “in the coming days”, the statement said.

Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. grew strained after the military ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi in July. The US has since condemned Egypt’s wave of repression targeting Islamist and secular opponents, and withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, as well as hardware that Egypt’s military has requested.

The US and Egypt’s military to military relationship should be defined by “common interests, in particular countering terror,” a top US military officers was quoted by Reuters News Agency as saying last month.

In April, the Obama administration said it would resume some military assistance suspended when Egypt’s military ousted Morsi, and provide attack helicopters to help Egypt fight militants based in the Sinai Peninsula.

The White House said that it noted domestic and international observers’ conclusions in their preliminary statements that the presidential election was administered professionally and in line with Egyptian laws. However, it said that it shares concerns raised by the observation groups on limits to freedom of assembly, association and expression. It called upon the government to ensure these freedoms as well as due process rights for all Egyptians.

“As Egypt looks toward parliamentary elections later this year, we urge the government to consider the recommendations of the observer groups on ways to improve the administration of future elections,” the statement said.

The European Union’s observation mission to Egypt released its preliminary report on May 29, a day after voting ended, and said that while the electoral process was peaceful, the decision to extend voting for a third day caused unnecessary uncertainty.

Amr al-Shobaky, a political expert at the state-owned Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, who acted as an adviser in Sisi’s presidential campaign, was also critical of the government’s decision to extend voting for a third day due to low reported turnout.

In his column today in Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt’s most widely circulated private daily newspaper, Shobaky said the decision caused a loss of confidence among Egyptians in the political process and the legitimacy of the election, and opened up Egypt to critique among international opinion.

He said that the difference between Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in an uprising in 2011, and Sisi should be in the ability of the latter to transform the revolutionary opposition into a truly reforming opposition that has its differences with the regime, and offers alternative policies. It shouldn’t be merely a decorative opposition, he said. 

“Real victory will mean creating safe alternatives for the transition of power, and not categorizing everything into one project and color, which would take us back to the square one that people revolted against,” Shobaky said. “We thought we had got rid of this with Mubarak and Morsi, but we are now back standing at a crossroads.”