When the people who are responsible for my country ask a direct question, I expect them to accept my direct answer and not to be blackballed or jailed because I am telling them the truth.
After my previous article “From Russia With Love” about retired field marshal Abdel Fattah ElSisi`s trip to Russia, I received a storm of criticism by my fellow Egyptians on how I accused the military and questioned their policies. Honestly this storm proved my point when I wrote that the media propaganda in my Egypt became worse than in China and North Korea combined, to the point that it makes me sick watching the election coverage in our media, praising and brainwashing the people to only vote for ElSisi. No wonder this is why a country with more than 100 political parties couldn''t dare to offer any candidates for the elections; they already know they don''t stand a chance - except for one man who took the risk, while at the same time knowing for certain that he will lose no matter how hard he tries or how good he is. This makes me wonder why he is running in the first place, spending all this money and effort on his campaign!!
How did a country like my Egypt with almost 90 million people only offer 2 presidential candidates? This is outrageous and shameful; in 2012 we had 13 presidential candidates, which reminds me of this quote:
"''Voting is not a right. It is a method used to determine which politician was most able to brainwash you.''''
As I mentioned two months ago, ElSisi is already the president of my Egypt whether we like it or not. This is why he, along with his campaign managers, didn''t play by the simple and most basic rules of a real democratic free elections for example: In his campaign, Elsisi never visited any cities or villages, his supporters and campaign managers were the ones who attended the rallies representing him; All of his TV interviews are prerecorded, not live interviews that display his real time reactions to the questions, but edited versions of these recorded interviews. And ElSisi didn''t even show up to a live debate with the other candidate - who I don''t support either - but a live debate is essential in any election campaign to show the reactions and the personality of the candidate you will give your vote to.
ElSisi’s posters are literally everywhere; all over the country, to the point where I am afraid that I will wake up one day and find one on my bathroom door.
The media here have put the fear of God in the people`s hearts telling us that the Muslim-Brotherhood are terrorists and will kill us all. They show ElSisi as their the one and only savior who saved us from becoming another version of Afghanistan. They brainwashed the people here to the point that no one cares about the 16,000 people - not just Muslim-Brotherhood members but also journalists and secular activists - who have been arrested since July, or the mass death sentences for 1,200 prisoners so far including leaders of the Muslim-Brotherhood and young students under the age of 20.
According to Amnesty International this this case of the 529 men is the largest batch of simultaneous death sentences in living memory. Although in another case, 683 were sentenced to death for killing a policeman. I don''t know why 683 people had to be convicted together for killing one man? The ratio of this equation doesn''t add up at all, even the laws of landscape and space can’t apply to make it possible for 683 people to all be in one place surrounding one man killing him. Maybe they consumed all the oxygen from the area which caused his death!
Everyone knows my positions and views against the Muslim-Brotherhood since the past two years, but these massive arrests and mass death sentences are very far from being fair and even farther from justice, which scares me because who knows who will be next on the list after the Muslim-Brotherhood is eliminated? ElSisi himself confirmed it loud and clear in his recorded TV interview that there will be no Muslim-Brotherhood during his reign of power. So again, who is next on his list?
The media here succeeded in dividing the country with polarization between the Egyptian people; either you are with us or against us.
After July 3rd ElSisi promised that no one in the military, including himself, had any intention of ruling the country, which was clearly his first broken promise that brought his credibility to me as zero, but others would say that ElSisi had to break that promise according to the will of the Egyptian people who demanded that he run for president.
But who can blame these people with all the media propaganda that has been running around the clock with one mission: vote for ElSisi.
Then our military declared a miracle in a televised conference addressed by ElSisi, the interim president Adly Mansour and other senior officials about wonderful curing devices that could detect and cure AIDS, hepatitis and other viruses. Of course all the media here were in a frenzy about these inventions and promoted them as if they were the fourth Pyramid of Egypt while in my eyes I knew this new device was perhaps a bomb detector or probably an advanced TV antenna.
This was a scandal by all measures that made my Egypt become a joke to the whole world.
The video clips of the presentation had gone viral on social media, with tweets and blogs saying the military had made a fool of itself and put its reputation in jeopardy along with my Egypt. So this scandal by no doubt is another example of a broken promise and a big illusion that was sold to the Egyptian people.
But in all of this media-driven brainwashing propaganda comes one honest media man of them all. Only one man I repeat who of course is the John Stewart of my Egypt, Dr. Bassem Youssef who speaks nothing but the truth. Of course he was forced to announce that he needed a brief vacation because of the Easter holidays, but I am 100% sure that he won’t show up until this so-called election ends. His last episode was aired on April 18th and since then he has remained off the air. Actually, I am not surprised because I believe if you want to tell people the truth, simply make them laugh; otherwise they''ll kill you or force you to take a vacation. I can’t blame him for staying off the air because he can`t win this fight by telling the truth during the elections period. I pray for his safety and well-being everyday.
(The last episode of Dr. Bassem''s show aired April 18th about the army''s claim to wonderful medical finds - English subtitles.)
I wasn''t surprised when former US president Jimmy Carter refused to send observers for the elections.
Because of all of the above, the Carter Center said it would only send a small team of experts to watch the elections from a distance in Cairo but not to monitor the voting process and confirm its legitimacy. Also the EU announced on Saturday, May 17th that it would not be able monitor the Egyptian presidential election this month because Cairo had not given permission for them to bring essential security and safety equipment hence they would only have a small group of observers only in Cairo.
But the Egyptian government released all the EU observers’ equipment on the next day, Sunday the 18th from the airport because losing the EU observers too would delegitimize this so-called election in the world`s eyes.
The bottom line is that in the 2012 elections there were more than 25 million voters who stood in lines for hours and cast their ballots. I strongly believe that this year we will have around 10 million voters who will go to the polls though counts will produce an over-estimation. Even those who worship ElSisi will not bother to go and stand in the lines because they know for a fact that he is already the president of my Egypt.
I sadly pray from my heart that I will be wrong, but I am expecting a very high level of violence during the election days in which bombs will explode, machine guns will fire at everyone, suicide bombers will attack and more shapes of violence will occur as a loud response towards this new-born dictatorship.
This time I won’t lie to you and pretend that I am not afraid of the consequences of saying my opinion out loud, but there`s no chance in hell that I can bite my tongue and stay silent about this madness. The Muslim-Brotherhood stole the 2011 revolution and the military stole the 2013 revolution and softly turned it into a coup blessed by the good people of Egypt thanks to our brainwashing media.
Standing true to what Neil Gaiman once said:
''''Being brave doesn''t mean you aren''t scared, being brave means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, BUT you do the right thing anyway.''''
I am scared for my Egypt`s future but doing the right thing is to tell the truth the way I see it and feel it the way it is.