CAIRO — Tens of thousands of Egyptians have set social media alight with tweets on opposing hashtags, one calling on President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to resign and another praising his leadership.
The hashtags surfaced after a recent wave of steep price increases for fuel, drinking water and electricity was introduced by the government as part of austerity measures designed to overhaul the economy, which is still recovering from a costly 2011 popular uprising. The increases were announced as Egyptians were celebrating Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, a move believed to be designed to minimize chances of protests.
Frustration deepened last week after Egypt’s national soccer team, competing in the World Cup for the first time since 1990, failed to advance after only two matches. The hashtags have picked up since, making it to Twitter’s top trending list in Egypt for days. But by Saturday, the one calling on el-Sissi to leave office carried more than 279,000 tweets. The opposing hashtag had a much lower figure of more than 48,000.
“No freedom, no justice, no education, no country, no humanity … it’s the time to go away!!!,” one user posted on the hashtag asking el-Sissi to leave, which is translated from Arabic as #Sissi—leave.
Meanwhile, other users flooded the hashtag praising the president (#myleaderisSissiandproud) with flattery and adulation.
Economic overhauls and austerity measures started shortly after el-Sissi took office in 2014 but have been accelerating recently and have hit poor and middle-class Egyptians especially hard. El-Sissi, who led the 2013 military overthrow of elected but divisive Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, has urged Egyptians to be patient as the changes take effect.
Ahead of the recent price increases, Egyptian authorities arrested several critics, including a well-known blogger and a socialist activist. The arrests, which came after el-Sissi’s re-election in a March vote in which he faced no serious challengers, are part of a wider crackdown on dissent since Morsi’s overthrow. Thousands of people have been jailed, including several prominent secular activists who defied the protest ban.
Those measures have virtually eliminated street activism in Egypt, where the 2011 uprising ended former President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule. The government also has cracked down on online organizing by blocking hundreds of websites, including many run by independent journalists and rights groups.