CAIRO — As
Egyptians mark the Muslim fasting
month of
Ramadan, they are being treated to a blockbuster TV series that
celebrates their army marshal turned president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
اضافة اعلان
Fans hail “Al-Ikhtiyar 3” (The Choice 3) for
enlightening the masses about Egypt’s turbulent recent history. Critics see it
as propaganda by a regime that rules with an iron fist.
While the first two seasons paid tribute to soldiers
who battle Islamist extremists and to national security agents, the third has
the 67-year-old Sisi as its central character.
The 30 episodes — watched by millions after the
traditional iftar sunset meals — trace the path of the then-defense minister
who in 2013 deposed Islamist president
Mohamed Morsi on his path to becoming
head of state.
Sisi himself told a reception this week that
Al-Ikhtiyar “tells exactly what happened at the time”.
Sahar Salaheddine, a columnist for state-owned
newspaper Al-Goumhuriya, praised the army-sponsored series for “showing the
love the people have for their president”, and the actors for being “soft power
... soldiers”.
The lead actor Yasser Galal has by all accounts
mastered Sisi’s mannerisms, his slightly arched eyebrows, pursed lips, and
signature whisper.
But, whatever Galal’s acting skills are, criticizing
his performance can be dangerous.
The Egyptian Front for
Human Rights said that lawyer
Nabil Abu Sheikha, after mocking the show on Facebook, was detained on April
11, accused of “disseminating false information” and belonging to a “terrorist”
group.
While state prosecutors did not comment on the case,
local media reported, citing unnamed “security sources”, that Abu Sheikha was
being prosecuted for an old case, without mentioning details.
Writer Shady Lewis Botros argued in an editorial
that Galal’s performance evoked “equal amounts of admiration and ridicule” and
that, “like the regime’s entire propaganda machine, it becomes a mechanical
replication of itself”.
‘Educate new generation’
The film studios of Cairo, long regarded as the
Hollywood of the
Arab world, have made on-screen heroes of Egyptian presidents
before.
In 1996, “Nasser 56” told the story of Gamal Abdel
Nasser nationalizing the Suez Canal in a two-and-a-half-hour black and white
epic. In 2001, his successor Anwar Al-Sadat got his own biopic, “Days of
Sadat”.
But Al-Ikhtiyar is not looking to the past, said one
of its screenwriters, Baher Dowidar. He argued the series will serve as nothing
less than “a history book” 50 years from now.
The goal, argues the local press, is to “educate the
new generation” about Egypt, where over half of the 103-million-strong
population is under 25.
Those who do not remember the summer of 2013 must be
shown “the state’s efforts to protect them from terrorism”, said one
state-owned newspaper.
‘Unforeseeable turmoil’
The show is a fictionalized look at the final 96
hours in the power of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Morsi, who was elected in
2012 following the Arab Spring protests and who died in prison in 2019.
The army deposed Morsi then violently crushed
protests by his supporters in what
Human Rights Watch called “one of the
world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history”.
A highlight of the TV show, the trailers promised,
was to be a series of leaked videos purportedly exposing Muslim Brotherhood
leaders including Morsi.
One clip of apparently real-life footage shows Morsi
warning the late field marshal Mohamed Tantawi, who was then the de facto
president, of “unforeseeable turmoil” if he did not win the presidential
election.
Though the series never sources the footage, it
appears to have been shot by the military without the Islamist leaders’
knowledge.
Lawyer Sherif Gadalla has said in an official
complaint that he believes the video shows that Tantawi used to “secretly
record his visitors”, and argues that the footage should never have been
leaked.
An ardent Sisi supporter, Gadalla targets the show’s
director and producer, not the government, reasoning that “the Egyptian state
apparatus is far too intelligent to be the source of the leaks”.
A very different reaction to the show came from
another lawyer,
Khaled Ali, a prominent figure on the left. He argued that the
show, if indeed historically accurate, proves the innocence of his client
Abdelmoneim Aboul Fotouh.
The lawyer argued that the series backs the claim of
Aboul Fotouh, who ran unsuccessfully against Morsi in the election, that he had
no financial ties to the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood — and announced plans
to submit four episodes of the show as evidence to the court.
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