When the Tamarod movement launched its campaign in April 2013, just ten months into Muslim Brotherhood rule, it presented itself as a grassroots initiative aimed at withdrawing confidence from the late President Mohamed Morsi and calling for early presidential elections, citing what it described as failures of state management and a deterioration in economic, security, and political conditions, as well as the failure to achieve the goals of the January 25 revolution — “bread, freedom, social justice, and human dignity.”
The Tamarod petition included an explicit call to withdraw confidence from the president and hold early presidential elections. The campaign’s stated justifications included: continued security deterioration, with citizens still lacking a sense of safety; the absence of social justice, with the poor seeing no improvement and the revolution’s demand for a dignified life unmet; loss of economic independence, through criticism of what it described as dependence on foreign aid and economic decline; failure to deliver justice for the martyrs of the January 25 revolution, with transitional justice unrealized and those responsible for killing protesters unaccountable; and accusations that the Morsi-era authorities were exploiting religion for political purposes — what the petition called “trading in the religion of Islam.” The call for early presidential elections was framed as the democratic means of renewing legitimacy and granting the people the right to choose a new president.
Thirteen years after the events of June 30, the question arises of what became of the demands raised by the Tamarod campaign, which more than 22 million citizens signed via the petition that spread across various governorates. Have the demands underpinning the campaign been met — chief among them restoring security, achieving social justice, and improving economic conditions?
Presidential Elections… From a Demand for “Renewed Legitimacy” to a Right to “Compete”
The central demand raised by the Tamarod campaign was withdrawing confidence from President Mohamed Morsi and calling for early presidential elections as a democratic way out of the political crisis the country faced in 2013.
Indeed, following the removal of President Mohamed Morsi, a roadmap was announced for a transitional period managed by Counselor Adly Mansour as interim president. New presidential elections were held in June 2014, regarded as fulfilling one of Tamarod’s core demands for early elections. They ended with Abdel Fattah El-Sisi winning 96.91% of valid votes against 3.09% for his rival Hamdeen Sabahi, according to the officially announced results at the time.
The elections sparked broad political debate over the level of competitiveness in the presidential race. Opposition forces and rights organizations considered that the elections took place in a climate marked by political polarization and limited genuine competition, citing the large margin in results and the nature of the unstable transitional period that followed Morsi’s removal. Other political forces, however, viewed the elections as having taken place under exceptional circumstances and as a step toward restoring stability and completing the roadmap announced after the political change of summer 2013.
Despite the controversy surrounding the 2014 presidential election, it is considered the least contentious compared to the subsequent presidential elections held in 2018 and 2024, which faced broader criticism from local and international rights organizations and election-monitoring reports regarding competitiveness and the political environment surrounding the vote.
In the 2018 election, 14 Egyptian and international rights organizations issued a joint statement describing the elections as “neither free nor fair,” stating that Egyptian authorities had “undermined the most basic requirements of free and fair elections” through restrictions on public freedoms and the prosecution of several potential candidates and their supporters.
These criticisms came amid the withdrawal of several potential candidates from the presidential race before it began, whether through voluntary withdrawal or exclusion. The most prominent was former Chief of Staff Sami Anan, who was arrested in January 2018 after declaring his presidential bid, before later receiving a military court ruling. Colonel Ahmed Konsowa was also arrested after announcing his candidacy. Ahmed Shafik and Khaled Ali both withdrew from the race, leaving President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to compete against El-Ghad Party leader Moussa Mostafa Moussa, who had previously announced his support for El-Sisi’s candidacy.
In an interview Zawia3 conducted with rights lawyer and former 2018 presidential candidate Khaled Ali, he revealed for the first time one of the reasons that led him to withdraw from the race at the time. He said his campaign detected what it considered indicators of attempts to implicate it in a crisis similar to the case of former presidential candidate Ayman Nour, related to electoral endorsement forms.
Ali explained that the campaign received endorsement forms it described as suspicious from several governorates, including Qalyubia, noting that some bore stamps without the required data being completed, while others contained names that did not match the voter databases the campaign had relied on from previous electoral cycles. He added that campaign members also received calls from people working at notary offices, who spoke of endorsement forms of unknown origin with no way to verify the identity of their holders or examine their ID cards.
According to Ali, these incidents raised concerns within the campaign that they might later be used in legal prosecutions or accusations regarding the validity of the endorsements, prompting many campaign members to favor withdrawal from the race — a decision he considered “the most appropriate” given the circumstances at the time.
As for the 2024 election, which came after constitutional amendments approved in 2019 that extended the presidential term and allowed President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to run for a new term, it likewise saw political and rights-related controversy, with some political forces launching a campaign titled “Two Terms Are Enough,” signaling opposition to El-Sisi seeking a new term.
During the candidacy phase, the campaign of potential presidential candidate Ahmed Tantawi announced that its supporters faced difficulties in obtaining the popular endorsements required to complete candidacy procedures — one of the legal requirements for running. In response, Egyptian authorities denied any deliberate obstacles facing candidates, affirming that the electoral process took place under the supervision of the National Election Authority and in accordance with the legal rules and procedures governing the vote.
For her part, Suzanne Nada, a lawyer and founding deputy of the (in-formation) Bread and Freedom Party, believes that a broad segment of Egyptians greeted the January 2011 revolution with high hopes of building a more just and free state, achieving human dignity, raising living standards, combating corruption, ensuring press and media freedom, strengthening public rights and freedoms, enabling workers to form independent unions, and improving women’s conditions in the labor market.
Nada adds, in her remarks to Zawia3, that the polarization that marked the Muslim Brotherhood’s period in power, along with the accompanying political and security crises, pushed broad segments of citizens to support the calls that culminated in the June 30 protests, in the hope that they would mark the beginning of a path fulfilling the demands for justice and freedom raised by the January revolution.
However, she considers that the years since have failed to achieve those aspirations, noting that freedom of trade union organization, in her view, still faces legislative and administrative restrictions limiting unions’ independence and their ability to represent workers and defend their rights.
She added that press and media freedom has seen a notable decline, amid the blocking of websites and the prosecution of journalists, writers, and citizens over their opinions or what they post on social media, alongside a changing media ownership landscape that has negatively affected pluralism within the media scene.
She also noted that restrictions have extended more broadly to freedom of opinion and expression, citing cases involving female activists and professionals who faced investigation or prosecution for expressing their views or raising public-interest issues, considering these practices to reflect a narrowing of public space.
Nada concluded by saying that the Egyptian constitution includes provisions guaranteeing freedom of opinion and expression and citizens’ basic rights, but that, in her assessment, subsequent practical implementation and legislation have hollowed out part of these guarantees, widening the gap between constitutional text and reality, and diminishing the hopes that accompanied the demands for change and reform raised more than a decade ago.
In an earlier report by Zawia3 titled “El-Sisi Wins a Third Term… After a Decade of the Baton’s Dominance Over Public Space,” the report documented what rights and political organizations described as a decline in spaces for political participation over the past ten years, amid restrictions targeting opposition parties and political forces through the arrest of several of their members, bans on their public activities, and constraints surrounding electoral competition.
In this context, Akram Ismail, a leading figure in the (in-formation) Bread and Freedom Party, said that political life in Egypt has undergone a gradual hollowing-out of its competitive content in recent years, considering that the authorities have moved toward “engineering electoral entitlements” in a way that shrinks genuine opposition participation.
Ismail added that the adoption of the absolute closed-list system in parliamentary elections has contributed to limiting opposition political forces’ chances of parliamentary representation, since all seats go to the winning list with no representation for other lists — which has affected the level of political pluralism within parliament. He also considered the most recent presidential election an extension of this approach, occurring within a political environment that does not encourage genuine competition or broad popular participation.
Ismail believes the ultimate result of these policies has been a decline in political parties’ capacity to perform their natural role of organizing, mobilizing, and expressing diverse social interests, leading to a contraction of public space and a decline in levels of political participation compared to what the country witnessed in the years following the January 2011 revolution.
Recommended Reading: Ziad El-Elaimy: No Real Opposition Without a Clearly Defined System of Governance — and Egypt Has Neither
Security Indicators: Between Terrorism, Crime, and the Rule of Law
Security was one of the central themes of the Tamarod movement’s discourse in 2013, with the campaign pointing to deteriorating security conditions, rising violence, and a diminished sense of safety on Egyptian streets.
According to the latest update of the crime index published by the Numbeo database this June, data indicates that Egypt’s (Cairo’s) crime level stands at roughly 49.81 points against a safety index of 50.19, placing it in the “moderate” range. The data shows the crime level estimated at 50.16 points, with a notable rise in crime rates over the past five years, reaching 61.64 points.
Some sub-indicators show moderate levels of concern related to crimes such as burglary, theft, and car theft or theft from vehicles, alongside fears of assault or harassment, while concern related to discrimination-based attacks is lower. The data also records a notable rise in the corruption and bribery index, at 79.22 points, identified as one of the most prominent challenges according to respondents’ perceptions.
By contrast, the data shows that the sense of safety while walking during the day reaches 71.57 points, a relatively high level, while this sense drops at night to 49.39 points, remaining within the moderate range.
The Rule of Law Index published by the World Justice Project places Egypt in a low global ranking, at 136th out of 142 countries in the latest available edition. By contrast, data from the Global Terrorism Index (GTI), published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), shows a relative improvement in Egypt’s ranking in recent years regarding terrorism-related crimes, moving from higher levels in earlier years to a lower-risk range in its most recent report, amid a decline in armed group activity compared to the peak reached in the mid-2010s. These indicators come amid the absence of official Egyptian statistics.
The Economic and Livelihood File… From the Drivers of 2013 to the Indicators of 2026
Over the period from 2013 to 2026, Egypt’s economic conditions underwent shifts and turning points that cast a shadow over living standards, the exchange rate, and the scale of external debt.
In terms of external debt, Egypt began 2013 at a level of around $43.2 billion. Over the following years, it rose continuously, surpassing $100 billion by the mid-2010s, before peaking at nearly $168 billion in later periods. By the first half of 2026, it had settled at around $163.9 billion — an increase of roughly $120 billion compared to the start of the period.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian pound’s exchange rate saw a more dramatic shift: it stood at around 7 Egyptian pounds ($0.13) to the dollar in 2013, before entering a phase of radical transformation with the first flotation decision in November 2016, when it jumped to around 18 Egyptian pounds ($0.35) to the dollar. Amid global economic pressures and the exit of foreign investment from debt instruments, the pound weakened again during 2022 to around 24.5 Egyptian pounds ($0.47) to the dollar. In 2023, it surpassed 30 Egyptian pounds ($0.58) to the dollar, before a new flotation in 2024 brought it to around 49.5 Egyptian pounds ($0.95) to the dollar, settling in 2026 in a range of approximately 50 Egyptian pounds ($0.96) to the dollar.
Poverty rates in Egypt during the period from 2013 to 2020 followed a fluctuating path shaped by several economic and political shifts, traceable through official data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). In 2012/2013, the national poverty rate stood at around 26.3%, amid political and economic instability following the events of 2011 and the resulting slowdown in growth and decline in certain production indicators.
By 2015, the poverty rate had risen to around 27.8%, coinciding with the early implementation of the reform program that revised subsidies. During 2017/2018, the poverty rate reached around 32.5%, the highest official level recorded at that stage, attributable primarily to the repercussions of the late-2016 exchange-rate liberalization and the resulting waves of sharp inflation that affected household purchasing power.
In 2019/2020, the poverty rate declined relatively to around 29.7%, according to the latest comprehensive official survey available. Since 2020, official statistics have been absent for a fourth consecutive year, while data from the 2019/2020 Household Income, Expenditure, and Consumption Survey showed the monetary poverty rate at around 29.7%, with continued reliance on subsequent international estimates to compensate for the absence of regular detailed updates. These estimates point to a continued wide segment of the population at or below the poverty line, particularly amid rising prices and exchange-rate fluctuations.
Multidimensional poverty reports, produced jointly by the government and international organizations, indicate that poverty in Egypt is not confined to monetary income but extends to other dimensions related to deprivation of quality education, health services, and decent work opportunities, with clear gaps recorded between rural and urban areas in favor of urban areas in terms of basic service levels.
Economic researcher Elhamy El-Merghany, speaking to Zawia3, points to the gradual shifts in official indicators related to poverty rates, external debt, and the local currency’s value against the dollar in recent years, considering these indicators reflective of accumulated economic pressures.
El-Merghany also points to the rise in inflation, which exceeded 40% in 2023, while food and beverage prices rose even higher, directly affecting people on fixed incomes — chief among them roughly 21 million workers — noting that the majority of workers do not receive the minimum wage, despite it being raised from around 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($23.08) to 8,000 Egyptian pounds ($153.85) over the period under review.
The economic researcher explains that pensioners faced similar pressures, despite the minimum pension being raised from around 300 Egyptian pounds ($5.77) to 1,755 Egyptian pounds ($33.75), considering these increases disproportionate to inflation and rising prices. He also points to a decline in some agricultural and industrial production indicators, alongside a rise in imports exceeding $100 billion in some years, and falling self-sufficiency rates in a number of basic commodities, reflecting growing dependence on foreign sources.
On debt, El-Merghany explains that domestic debt rose from around 1.5 trillion Egyptian pounds ($28.85 million) in June 2014 to nearly 11 trillion Egyptian pounds ($211.54 billion) in 2025, while external debt rose from around $46 billion to around $165 billion over the same period, alongside the Egyptian pound’s decline to around 50 to the dollar. He also notes that debt-servicing burdens — interest and installments — rose from around 429.4 billion Egyptian pounds ($8.26 billion) in 2014/2015 to nearly 5.2 trillion Egyptian pounds ($100 billion) in recent years, with these burdens representing around 43.7% of total budget uses before rising to nearly 64%.
[Note: the 1.5 trillion EGP (2014) figure converts to approximately $28.85 billion, not million — flagging this for accuracy since the source uses “trillion.”]
El-Merghany considers that these official figures raise questions about public spending priorities, and the extent to which the expansion in borrowing and major projects that do not generate direct financial returns — such as the New Administrative Capital, the monorail, and the high-speed rail — have translated into real development gains and improved living standards.
Freedoms and Political Life
The Tamarod campaign is considered one of the most prominent precursors to the events of June 30, representing a wave of broad political mobilization involving millions of citizens, presented as a form of mass expression through peaceful protest.
Following the events of June 30, 2013, the Protest Law was issued — viewed by rights advocates as a turning point in regulating public space due to its role in restricting forms of peaceful protest, coinciding with waves of arrests and prosecutions targeting a number of activists in subsequent years.
The legislative framework later expanded to include various amendments and laws, including the counter-terrorism law, media regulation laws, and laws related to information technology crimes, up to the Criminal Procedure Law, despite the criticism it has drawn.
In a Zawia3 report titled “After the Emergency Law… An Exception Written Into Law,” legal and political experts explained that this legal framework is used to prosecute politicians and activists under a legal cover, while simultaneously performing oversight and punitive functions similar to the pre-January emergency-law era — particularly through expanding the scope of criminalization and relying on pretrial detention and judicial procedures as tools with extended punitive effect.
In recent years, recurring charges such as “spreading false news” and “joining a group established in violation of the law or a terrorist group” have emerged as among the most frequently used accusations in cases involving politicians, activists, and opposition figures. According to experts who spoke to the report, the accusatory discourse has shifted notably — moving from charges described before 2011 as weak or lacking legal precision to what is known as “boilerplate charges,” with repeated formulas used across all politically tinged cases.
In this context, rights lawyer Halim Heneish believes the current situation involves a greater degree of restriction on public space compared to the period before 2013, noting that party political life has become more constrained, and that a number of political parties have faced significant pressure including legal prosecution and restricted activity, alongside what he described as the “hollowing out” of some parties’ structures due to the arrest of a number of their leaders and members — among them the Strong Egypt Party and others.
He notes that these restrictions also extended to political and social movements, citing the April 6 Movement, the Justice and Freedom movement, and Ultras groups, along with security crackdowns affecting many politicians, rights advocates, and journalists — which he considers to have led to a clear decline in political actors’ ability to organize or influence public space.
Heneish explains that comparing the current situation to that before 2013 reveals, in his words, a major shift in the nature of public space — from a phase that saw attempts to build and expand party political life, to a later phase characterized by a recalibration of the political space and a narrowing of spaces for participation and expression.
The rights lawyer also considers the events of June 30 to have been “inevitable,” resulting from prior political and economic accumulation, and that Muslim Brotherhood policies contributed to creating a state of acute polarization that culminated in the June 30 movement — noting the need to distinguish between June 30 and July 3, and explaining that the political developments following the popular movement marked a transition to a different path in managing the political landscape, resulting in a reshaping of the balance of power within the state and society.
In an earlier Zawia3 report titled “Twelve Years of Siege: How Was Civic Space Reshaped in Egypt?”, the report found that the accumulated shifts in public space since 2013 — shaped by an interconnected series of legislation, policies, and security practices — redrew the boundaries of political and civic participation and gradually entrenched a more restrictive pattern for public space.
The report notes that these shifts were not limited to restricting traditional tools of expression such as protest and party activity, but extended to reshaping the environment supporting civic work, including professional syndicates, civil society associations, and the digital space — leading to a contraction of spaces for public influence in favor of more centralized patterns of managing the political and social domain.
It further explains that the accumulation of these policies resulted in an uneven redistribution of participation opportunities, as independent actors’ capacity to influence public debate or reach audiences declined, while organizational and media tools tied to official structures rose — affecting the nature of public discourse and the limits of pluralism within it.
The report concludes that the trajectory of civic space in Egypt cannot be read as a single pivotal event, but rather as a process of “gradual re-engineering” in which legislation intertwined with security practices and media shifts, producing an environment more disciplined in form but more closed in substance and genuine pluralism. It concludes by noting that the pre-2013 period was marked by attempts to expand public space and build party political life, while the subsequent period was marked by a recalibration of that space that significantly narrowed it in terms of organization, expression, and participation, with a consequent reshaping of the balance of power within the state and society.
Thirteen years after the Tamarod campaign, which raised demands centered on restoring security, improving economic conditions, and completing the January revolution’s path toward freedom and justice, the facts, data, and testimonies on which this report draws suggest that the outcome of these demands appears mixed.
On the security front, indicators show a decline in terrorism risk compared to the peak years following the June 30 events, accompanied by a relative improvement in security stability — though this has coincided with continued increases in some crime indicators such as theft and burglary, and a decline in Egypt’s ranking on rule-of-law indices, amid the absence of regular official data on security conditions.
Economically, the official and international data cited in this report point to unprecedented expansion in borrowing, rising public debt, a declining pound, and continued pressure on living standards, despite the government’s implementation of major national projects and adoption of economic reform programs.
On freedoms and political life, the rights reports and testimonies documented in this report point to a contraction of public space, a decline in party pluralism and political participation, and the imposition of further restrictions on freedom of organization and expression — in contrast to the demands raised by the forces involved in the June 30 movement.
Ultimately, the demand that appears to have been relatively fulfilled is the restoration of a degree of security stability related to counterterrorism, while the demands tied to improving economic conditions and expanding public space and freedoms remain open questions, without clear answers.
