As Sisi leads polls, expert says U.S. ‘chomping at the bit’ to restore aid

A landslide win by Gen. Abdel Fattah El Sisi may end up repairing relations between the United States and Egypt, UCLA professor James Gelvin said on Al Jazeera’s Sunday night show “The Week Ahead.”

“The United States is chomping at the bit now to restore the aid that had been cut off and to declare that Egypt is on its way to democratic transition in spite of the horror show that Egypt has become internally,” said Gelvin, who was joined by Harvard’s Ashraf Hegazy and Al Jazeera America’s Morgan Radford.

The past year has seen strained relations between the United States and Egypt. Though Washington was cautious about calling the 2013 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi a coup — which would require the U.S. to halt all aid to the country — President Barack Obama suspended part of the annual $1.3 billion in military aid from the U.S. to Egypt and stopped the delivery of some military equipment.  

Gelvin chided Secretary of State John Kerry for saying that the Egyptian military had restored democracy in the country and called the situation a very clear coup d’état. “I think that security interests for the United States are placed well above … interests in spreading human rights and democracy,” Gelvin said.

But no amount of international aid will be able to help restore Egypt’s ailing economy, according to Hegazy, a senior associate at the Harvard International Negotiation Program. 

“The Egyptian economy has to start running internally,” he said. “We have to see new jobs. We have to see new programs. And unfortunately, until there is a much stronger sense of stability and security in the country, the economy is not going to rebound.”

A recent Pew Research Center Poll found that more than half of Egyptians would prefer stability to a democratic government. Gelvin attributes this sentiment to the glaring structural problems plaguing the country. 

“I’m not quite sure [these issues] really can be addressed,” he said. “They’re not going to be able to do very much to turn things around at all.”