Disposed during Ramadan, the third season of the “choice” is accused of serving propaganda and rewriting history, while the country is in the grip of inflation.
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In this month of Ramadan fasting, the Egyptians must deal with record inflation to garnish their tables, once the sun is lying. It is a backlash of war in Ukraine. Also, faced with the gloom and the uncertainties of daily life, a television series takes care to change their ideas by playing on patriotic fiber: al-Ikhtiyar 3, (the choice temps3), one of these soaps designed for Accompanying the evenings of Ramadan, propels President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi as a fictional hero. A hagiography that makes him the white knight of Egypt.
Halfway between political drama and action film, this third season of choice, broadcast from April 2 to 1 er May, follows the period 2012-2013, when Sissi becomes Minister of The defense of President Mohamed Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter was overthrown by the army in 2013 – he died in prison in 2019. Key figures of the brotherhood which has become prohibited in Egypt are also embodied in the series which mixes archive images and fiction.
Unsurprisingly, the former Marshal, who has directed Egypt with an iron fist since 2014, appears there in eminently flattering features. Av winced and patriotic, benevolent, concerned with his family and his soldiers, devoid of any thirst for power, he presents himself as a rampart against chaos and extremism. “I have no other interest than that of my country,” proclaims the character Sissi, interpreted by actor Yasser Galal.
a power already all-powerful
This season has triggered an avalanche of reactions. In the loyalist ranks, the Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram rents a major “document” “on the conspiracies that Egypt has crossed over the past ten years”. On the other hand, the Mada Masr information site, considered one of the last bastions of the independent press, points to the mixture of genres of a series of “political propaganda”, which notably uses recordings of meetings of the Muslim Brotherhood.
On the Lebanese site Al -Modon, the Egyptian writer Shadi Lewis believes that Al -Ikhtiyar only “recycled the same story” – highlight an existential danger – to divert the attention of Egyptians from others questions, like that of the drop in standard of living. Egyptian opponents are standing against this new demonstration of already all-powerful power: in 2019, the Constitution was modified to extend the duration of the presidential mandate from four years to six years and pave the way to a third candidacy of Abdel Fattah al-Sissi in 2024.
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