If we have to let generals run Egypt, must we pay for them, too?

The polls have closed, and the result was never in doubt. With a whopping majority, Egyptians have chosen Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to be their next president. Much like his several predecessors going back to 1952 when army officers overthrew King Farouk, the new president brings to office ambitious plans to whip his countrymen into shape.

What Egyptians need, Sisi believes, is discipline. He has volunteered for the role of drill sergeant-in-chief. ‘Will you bear it if I make you walk on your own feet? When I wake you up at five in the morning every day? Will you bear cutting back on food, cutting back on air-conditioners?’ We may take such posturing with a grain of salt, along with announced plans to make the desert bloom, reform Egypt’s bureaucracy, and solve the country’s energy problems by installing high-efficiency light bulbs in every home.

Egypt is a genuine democracy in this respect: prior to an election, candidates make absurd promises that they have no intention of keeping. In every other respect, Egypt is an oligarchy, an enterprise that exists to serve the interests of two overlapping constituencies: the officer corps and a wealthy business elite.

The chief priority of the army officer serving as Egypt’s president, his true allegiance partly camouflaged by the civvies he wears to work, is not to modernise and certainly not to democratise Egypt but to preserve the status quo. Change would imperil the existing allocation of privileges. Whatever the vote count, Sisi’s mandate is to retain the present allocation. Thus does the political tradition founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s and carried on by his successors Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak persist.