A plane flying to Sharm el-Sheikh was detained at Pulkovo Airport in Saint-Petersburg as a result of a row started by a drunken passenger. Tour operators report about the complicated situation in Egypt. The number of flights from Omsk to Thailand has increased to five times the number to the Red Sea.
Alexander Ignatenko, president of the Institute for Religion and Politics, said ”Egypt has many social, political, economic and foreign political problems. Future president Marshal El-Sisi needs to resolve all these problems. Preparations for the presidential polls in May are taking place in conditions where terrorist groups are being supported, financed, armed, sent and given orders by foreign centers of power. They are branches of the al-Qaida Guerillas of Jerusalem and Followers of Sharia under the patronage of Qatar. Branches of this international organization operate in Libya, Tunisia, Yemen. They became evident in Russia by organizing several terrorist attacks.” Moreover, according to Ignatenko, Egypt is under U.S. and Saudi Arabian pressure.
Shamil Sultanov, president of the Russia – Islamic World Center for Strategic Studies, is confident that the political practice of modern Egypt should not inspire illusions of real people’s will at the upcoming presidential polls: “Even according to official data, 37% of the population took part in the January referendum for the new Constitution of Egypt. The majority of the population voted for the opposition, urging people to ignore the vote. According to analytical data of some intelligence services in Egypt, about 25-27% of the population took part in the referendum.
In June, El-Sisi will be named the new president of Egypt, he will get at least 80% of the votes. Will the complicated political and socio-economic situation developing in Egypt change after the elections? Will the presidential elections be a real step towards pulling Egypt from the situation of constant degradation it is falling into or not?”
The expert gives a negative forecast to his questions: “The population of Egypt totals 81-82 million people. It will exceed 100 million. Unemployment totals 13% in Egypt, according to official data; in reality, it exceeds 30%. The government needs to open at least 1.5-2 million new jobs every year. But who can offer such a real socio-economic program for Egypt? El-Sisi cannot do it, because the interior structure of the Egyptian government is corrupt to the core, and corrupt ties precondition what they like: they sit “siphoning off money” and will stay that way. However, this cannot continue for long. After the announcement of the election results, the population will rise up for 3-4 months. By September-October, the situation will start to deteriorate. There will not be hundreds of thousands of people on the streets as there are now. There will be tens of thousands. Closer to early 2015, the situation will continue to deteriorate.
