CAIRO — President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi told graduating cadets on Saturday that his presidency ends in 2030, then described a military academy course meant to produce the people who could replace him. The pledge lands in a country where presidential terms were lengthened by a 2019 amendment, and where some voices have been urging him to stay.
Speaking at the Egyptian Military Academy in the New Administrative Capital, Sisi said, in The National’s translation, “My term in office ends in 2030 and this is a total given and will not be debated.” The same speech also carried, as TEH reported, a request for parliamentary approval to defend Saudi Arabia if Riyadh asks.
Earlier in the week Sisi had said the constitution would not change, and The National noted that some posts, including from accounts linked to the government or security agencies, urged him to stay. Saturday’s remarks answer those calls but open a harder question: who follows him, and how.
The route, The National reported, runs through the academy. It would take up to 1,000 candidates holding doctorates from Egyptian or foreign universities, aged 40 to 50, for a 30-month course sponsored by the armed forces, after interviews and vetting. Anadolu, Middle East Eye and Daily Sabah give no headcount, so the 1,000 figure rests on one account.
Sisi said he would “not leave the Egyptian state until it is brimming with its own people capable of shouldering responsibility,” in the wording carried by Anadolu, Middle East Eye and Daily Sabah. He dismissed talk that he is grooming a relative, The National reported: “There is no such thing.”
The wording itself is contested. Al Jazeera’s translation has him saying the period leading up to 2030 “will be the end of my term as president of the state, if I am still alive.” The versions from Anadolu, Middle East Eye and The National carry no such qualifier.
What he left out matters too. Sisi did not say whether civilians and serving officers can both apply, The National noted, which leaves open an army officer’s candidacy in 2030, and critics on social media said the conditions would need a constitutional amendment. He also asked parliament to pass a law making the armed forces protector of the state, democracy and territorial integrity. Middle East Eye placed the speech beside an estimate from unnamed rights groups that more than 60,000 prisoners of conscience are held in Egyptian jails, a figure it did not source.
Whoever inherits the office inherits a strained economy. The National said the Iran war and Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia have raised Egypt’s energy import costs and cut Suez Canal revenue, and that critics fault the government over the unresolved Nile dam dispute with Ethiopia.
The accounts TEH reviewed do not say whether a candidate who never entered the academy could still stand in 2030, or who will decide which graduates reach the ballot.
