With his trademark black sunglasses and blanket media presence, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, elected this week to a second term in office, projects an air of benign paternalism.
Whether the people love or loathe El-Sisi, see him as a bulwark of stability or as a domineering autocrat — there is little doubt that he will remain Egypt’s president for years to come.
He stormed to victory in the 2014 presidential election, having led the military a year before in ousting the North African country’s first freely elected leader, Mohammed Mursi.
Mursi now languishes in jail, convicted on many and varied counts and handed sentenced multiple sentences including the death penalty.
El-Sisi successfully silenced all forms of political opposition during his first four-year term.
In the runup to his reelection announced on Thursday, he swept aside all token opposition parties, leaving himself as the main choice on the ballot paper.
The sole challenger was the little-known Moussa Mostafa Moussa, himself a supporter of the president, who registered immediately before the close date for applications, saving the election from being a one-horse race.
El-Sisi swept the poll with 92 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results reported by state media.
Other, more heavyweight would-be challengers were all sidelined, detained or pulled out.
The former career army officer was born in November 1954 in El-Gamaleya neighborhood in the heart of Islamic Cairo.
Even as a child, El-Sisi sought to exert control over those around him, according to people who knew him at the time.
He graduated from Egypt’s Military Academy in 1977, later studying in Britain and the US, before becoming military intelligence chief under President Hosni Mubarak who was toppled in a January 2011 uprising.
As Egypt’s leader, El-Sisi is often seen microphone in hand, presiding over public ceremonies.
Speaking in the Egyptian Arabic dialect, sometimes laughing in the middle of his own lengthy speeches, he projects an image of father of the nation.
He is fond of telling Egyptians that they are the apple of his eye, stressing that he is there only to serve them.
Enjoying near-unanimous media support, El-Sisi is popular among many Egyptians who see him as the right man to lead the country after years of political, security and economic turmoil that followed the ouster of Mubarak.
A father of four whose wife wears a headscarf, El-Sisi is described by those close to him as a pious Muslim who does not miss any of the five daily prayers.
But he is also reported to have a strong sense of self-belief, with audio recordings leaked by Islamic-leaning media pointing to a big ego.
In one leak, El-Sisi recalls a dream about the late president Anwar Sadat, which he saw as an omen that he would one day become powerful himself.
In another, he tells of a dream in which he held a red sword inscribed with the Muslim declaration of faith.
Ironically, it was Mursi himself who appointed El-Sisi defense minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces in 2012.
A year later, El-Sisi ended Mursi’s turbulent year in power and cracked down on the hard-line supporters, with hundreds of people killed in weeks.
Since Mursi’s removal, tens of thousands of his followers have been jailed, and hundreds sentenced in hurried mass trials strongly denounced by the UN.
As security issues mounted, El-Sisi launched a military campaign against Daesh terrorists based in the Sinai Peninsula.
But so far he has been unable to fully quash an insurgency that has killed hundreds of civilians as well as police and troops.
Economically, he has begun an IMF-mandated program of drastic reforms that include cutting energy subsidies, introducing value-added tax and floating the pound.
During his first presidential campaign in 2014, he said that “talking about freedoms” should not take precedence over “national security,” and that it would take “20 to 25 years to establish a true democracy” in Egypt.
Egypt's El-Sisi: Undisputed leader and ‘father figure’
Egypt's El-Sisi: Undisputed leader and ‘father figure’
