CAIRO - The senior leaders of the Egyptian military have authorized Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to run for president, state television reported Monday, making it nearly certain that he would seek the post.
El-Sissi, the military officer who ousted Egypt’s first elected president and who has been serving as defense minister, was also promoted on Monday to field marshal.
He is seen as all but certain to win the presidency. Nearly every other potential candidate has said that he would not run for the office if el-Sissi sought it. The government that he installed last summer has suppressed the largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and cracked down on other dissenters. A revised constitution that was presented as a referendum on el-Sissi’s leadership was approved by more than 98 percent of the votes cast this month.
The general has ridden a wave of popularity that has given him the status of a national icon since he led the removal of President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader who won election but failed to revive Egypt’s moribund economy, restore stability or fully control the often freewheeling and self-interested institutions of the country’s bureaucracy, especially the military and the police.
El-Sissi was appointed as defense minister by Morsi in the summer of 2012, and at the time he appeared determined to keep the military out of politics.
“With all respect for those who say to the army, ‘Go into the street’: If this happened, we won’t be able to speak of Egypt moving forward for 30 or 40 years,” el-Sissi said in the spring of 2013. A few months later, though, he led the military to remove Morsi from office after a weekend of huge street protests.
