There were no surprises in last week’s presidential election in Egypt. It was clear from the outset that Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi, the former defense minister and the most powerful man in the Egyptian leadership, would be elected Egypt’s next president. His rivals made life easy for him. Sisi’s primary enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, largely boycotted the election, thereby paving the way for his landslide victory, and the low voter turnout will probably soon be forgotten. Moreover, only a single candidate – Hamadin Sabahi – opposed him. In 2012, in the previous presidential election, Sabahi placed third among 13 candidates, earning five million votes. Sabahi, a well known figure in Egypt, was a student leader in the 1970s, a leftist Nasserite activist arrested several times, and a prominent member of parliament for a decade. He was a leader of the January 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak’s regime; he opposed the Muslim Brotherhood, and was regarded as someone who represented the values of the revolution.

However, it was clear that Sabahi could not compete with Sisi’s status and popularity. Sisi has been the most prominent member of the military leadership that has ruled Egypt since the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime under Mohamed Morsi in the middle of 2013. The bitter disappointment, anger, and frustration of most of the Egyptian public with the Muslim Brotherhood regime strengthened the sense that Egypt needs a strong leader who can restore stability to Egypt, fight domestic terrorism, enforce law and order, ensure personal security, rebuild the failing economy, which has declined since Mubarak’s fall from power, and strengthen the country’s damaged regional status. Most of the Egyptian public, political parties, and media view Sisi as such a leader; the fact that he enjoys the full backing of other senior military figures is a significant bonus. Some have gone so far as to cast him in the role of a second Nasser, though he is still far from having attained the stature of the Egyptian and Arab world leader of the 1950s and 1960s. But the fact that the comparison is being made is instructive: many Egyptians long for a strong leader who will take Egypt in a new direction.

However, not everyone in Egypt wants to see Sisi as the nation’s leader. First and foremost, the Muslim Brotherhood considers him as an enemy for having deposed Morsi, who was freely elected by a majority of the population, and has consequently declared war on the organization. Yet even among groups that opposed the Muslim Brotherhood – including liberal factions – there are those who worry that Sisi will distance himself from the goals of the revolution, stop the democratization process that began after the revolution, return Egypt to the Mubarak era, and take advantage of his standing to construct a military dictatorship. At the same time the damage incurred by the Brotherhood has resulted in the need to stabilize the nation and rebuild it, and this is seen by many Egyptians as the priority, overshadowing the drive to promote the revolutionary values and the democratic process.