Egypt’s rushed election shows Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is nervous

POLITICIANS campaign in poetry, as the saying goes, even if they govern in prose. Rarely do they write verses about suffering. Last month Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s military dictator, tried out a bleak slogan for his upcoming election. “If the price of the nation’s progress and prosperity is hunger and thirst, then let us not eat or drink,” he said. With food prices up 72% over the past year, many voters are doing just that: dulce et decorum est, indeed.