{"id":17934,"date":"2023-12-12T21:40:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T19:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=17934"},"modified":"2026-10-08T20:43:37","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T18:43:37","slug":"op-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/op-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"One Picture and Three Others: How Does Campaign Publicity Express Symbolic Power and Cronyism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a few days, the 2024 presidential election will be over and Egypt’s next president will be announced. At first glance, the news seems known in advance, without the need for proof from the ballot boxes, whether to the political and media observer or to the ordinary citizen. Despite this, the legitimacy of power is tied to procedures of legal formality, especially given a desire not to repeat the scenario of the 2018 election, for many reasons at the heart of which is the economic crisis. Thus the assumption of formal competition, which is the ABC of any democratic ballot, was considered an entry point for relatively opening up the public sphere, especially as it was prepared through the “National Dialogue” table, which, as I pointed out in a previous article<\/a>, is “a procedure followed in the structure of the nation-state to establish sovereignty and symbolic legitimacy after the state of exception expires; thus the National Dialogue was a foundation on the path of the New Republic”.<\/p>\n

However, the stone thrown by former prospective candidate Ahmed Tantawy from outside the dome of the National Dialogue, when he announced his entry into the electoral scene as a political alternative for democratic transition, in an attempt at popular pressure to guarantee a serious and fair electoral process, was enough to reveal the process of political engineering of the public sphere, as the violations, according to the “Egyptian Front for Human Rights<\/a>“, were systematic, by “the executive institutions of the state and loyalist parties, through the use of political money and social bribery”.<\/p>\n

Indicators of the lack of follow-up of and interest in the presidential election, which are easy to deduce and observe in daily life, are reflected to the point of surprise at the approach of the voting date, especially as coverage of the events of the Israeli aggression on Gaza has dominated the public climate and is linked to popular sentiment and to Egyptian national security. However, despite the “campaign of candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi<\/a>” announcing “an explicit directive from its candidate to reduce electoral publicity to its minimum” in favour of the people of Gaza, what the advertising spaces witnessed was a wide and profuse spread of the electoral “picture”, as if speaking in the voice of the English novelist George Orwell: Big Brother is watching you! We therefore raise the following questions: why the insistence on the dominance of billboards? What does the “picture” tell us about society, money and politics? And how did the electoral “picture” draw the map of political life after the election?<\/p>\n

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The Age of the Image: Generating Symbolic Power<\/h3>\n

The image has become an important cultural and ideological medium, to the point that several expressions have been coined, such as “the age of the image” and “the civilisation of the image”, especially with contemporary digital life, in addition to its penetration through the “ideological state apparatuses”, according to the concept of the French philosopher Louis Althusser, whereby socialisation into the values of the state and its hegemony takes place through institutions, from the family to education and on to religious, civil and media institutions, and so on.<\/p>\n

However, the “image”, as rhetoric and political metaphor, according to the political thinker Ammar Ali Hassan in his book “The Political Metaphor”, goes beyond expressing reality; rather, the meanings and connotations it carries enter the realm of metaphor.<\/p>\n

Here the electoral picture seems to have direct political meanings related to exclusive election publicity, but the matter seems to go beyond that single reading. The siege of the authority’s candidate’s picture filled the huge advertising walls on main roads and bridges and in big cities, especially the new ones, spaces that had always been reserved for marketing the projects of real estate developers and major brands; through them, too, the picture is marketed through the electoral process, with phrases such as “The Path of Dignity Is One”, “We Are All with You” and “Beloved of the Egyptians”. Thus it turned from mere outdoor advertisements in the streets into a promotion of the state’s project led by the current candidate, as a metaphor for complete political hegemony.<\/p>\n

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The picture, with its different sizes and wide, repeated spread, reinforces an idea that takes hold of our unconscious perceptions, whose essence lies in preparing the mental image for a phrase stating that there is no one but him to continue the path, and that the choice finds no one more worthy than him. Although there are some relatively few banners for the other candidates, who may be unknown to large sections of the people, their marginal presence entrenches the idea and that mental image, which discourages the politically alienated social self towards voluntary submission. This is how it appears to the political engineering that works to fix the pillars of legitimacy through slogans and by concentrating the picture in the imagination and common sense.<\/p>\n

In his lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu points to the characteristic of symbolic power as being “a power that is invisible and can only be exercised with the complicity of those who refuse to acknowledge that they are subject to it and even exercise it”.<\/p>\n

Here symbolic violence seems more vital in social relations, penetrating emotional and cognitive structures, domesticating society into complicity and identification, and normalising the individual into a feeling of inferiority, which makes it easier to extend the legitimacy of the regime’s material violence, which seeks to assert, in language, image and procedures, that the concepts of regime and state are identical. Thus the picture plays deeper roles in perpetuating the political imaginary of despotism, by creating the space of the image in the architectural planning of roads and cities so that it becomes a compulsory path built into the visual and mental image together.<\/p>\n

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The Clientelist Network: How Does the “Picture” Frame the Nation’s Future?<\/h3>\n

The electoral picture as a whole is of course not merely an extended advertising space without a clear frame that draws its dimensions and limits. Rather, one of the more general functions of the picture in the electoral scene, which revolves around the phenomenon of “celebratory voting<\/a>” before the announcement of a landslide victory with national slogans, and the continued dominance of the picture on walls, in the streets and during occasions, is the pattern of hidden surveillance without an observer, as if the picture plays the role of the “Panopticon<\/a>” idea of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, which is based on watching everyone at the same time without people knowing they are being watched. Indeed, the idea of surveillance may penetrate the social mind and turn into self-censorship in society and state institutions, as the prestige of the President’s picture manifests itself everywhere.<\/p>\n

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The Panopticon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet behind the watching picture there is also the clientelist function. The concept of “political clientelism<\/a>” is based on social ties and relations, representing a network of interests founded on political patronage in exchange for interests, directly or implicitly, and the “picture” always appears as a declaration of political support as well, whose spread we may track according to class position. The picture on the large, costly billboards points to the “new cronies” of the authority in their clientelist relationship with it through loyalist parties made up of an organic network of businessmen and clients.<\/p>\n

The economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi, in his book “The Great Transformation”, points out that economic systems are part of wider social relations. That view may clarify for us the scene expressed by the “picture” concerning the social structures that form the base of material and symbolic support for the authority, as the base of capitalist social relations of the “crony” actors relies on numerous ties, from family and extended families, religious sects, neighbourhood acquaintances and friends to political relations.<\/p>\n

While the picture declares loyalty to the authority and therefore the economic interest of the cronies, it plays a relatively different role in the small and medium, cheap banners in working-class neighbourhoods and old cities, where it represents an incubator of the middle class and lower capital that identifies with the director in order to open channels of relations that give it implicit privileges, such as clientelist bargaining, for example, with the utilities administration over encroachments, or closeness to some politicised businessmen in order to secure priority in services and connections, while the picture of the presidential candidate reminds the destitute poor of a season of livelihood and harvest in the form of services and aid such as food boxes or election money.<\/p>\n

The picture does not appear only in the context of the election; it remains present and continuous in the civil and party services for those poor sectors, whose need is exploited through political and electoral mobilisation by way of the network of interests of political businessmen, which in turn filled the gap left by the decline of the civil and service role of political Islam movements.<\/p>\n

Building this social base through the politicisation of businessmen in a network of interests subject to the control and direction of the bureaucracy ruling the national and construction projects makes the election scene as a whole an opportune occasion to prove and tighten control through arteries and channels that play on cronyism, clientelism and the preservation of existing interests, which have become closer to mediation between the state and society amid the erosion of civil society and the public climate. The language of the picture has become the link of communication, political support and national belonging, as it has overshadowed the importance of the traditional mediation of the village mayor, tribal sheikhs and city governors. In this way the picture seems a landmark on the state’s path in participating in the accumulation of capital, which benefits a few who in turn give the authority a blank cheque through social capital.<\/p>\n

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After the Election: Pluralism within an Authoritarian Framework<\/h3>\n

One picture and three others… This is the pluralism the presidential election tells us about. Perhaps what it shows, the dominance of the current President’s picture over the pictures of the other candidates, is enough to make us ask about the direction of power: is it authoritarian despotism or democratic pluralism?<\/p>\n

Yet trying to understand what the dominance of the electoral picture expresses about political life after the election leads us to understand what the picture is founded on. Since the end of the Cold War with the fall of the Berlin Wall, many dictatorial regimes have sought to adapt to the new world order, which, along with many other factors, led former President Hosni Mubarak to hold a presidential election in 2005 for the first time since the declaration of the republic. Alongside the President’s picture hanging in government offices and at celebrations and referendums, there were now pictures of other competing candidates. This competition seems to have been designed from the start along the lines of “hybrid power”, as the President and current candidate brought nothing new after the Arab Spring except rearranging the internal house and interests and reviving the hybrid nation-state.<\/p>\n

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The New Republic appears by definition to be a “hybrid regime<\/a>“, meaning that it is based on democratic and legal legitimacy and holds election procedures, but it is a flawed democracy, as it does not rest on sufficient guarantees or on complete integrity, so that it offers non-competitive pluralism amid the systematic restriction of civil liberties and of advertising and media space. The space for political competition is therefore confined to competition between loyalist parties and political elites within the same circle controlled by a single group, making the rotation of power almost impossible. That is why the making of the “picture” is a sign of hybrid power, which makes it a tradition in force visually and semantically.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most prominent thing that shaped this limited pluralism is the ruling regime’s reliance on the loyal capitalist class, as we pointed out earlier. This need became more pressing from the Mubarak era onwards. According to political economy professor Samer Soliman in his book “The Strong Regime and the Weak State”, the Mubarak regime relied on money and services to buy political support, but the decline in state revenues was reflected in a deterioration of its “political purchasing power”, so the compensation came through an increased intervention of businessmen’s purchasing power.<\/p>\n

The political participation of Egyptian capitalism was more striking in the policies of Ahmed Nazif’s government and the project of Gamal Mubarak’s succession, but the regime of 3 July 2013 reshaped the space of the bourgeoisie and set the field for the rise of new middle-bourgeois tributaries according to the network of interests and the new cronyism within the framework of loyalist parties, directly or indirectly, in order to push forward the authority’s intensive projects for the New Republic.<\/p>\n

Some economic and social indicators point to the declining popularity of the authority’s current candidate amid government policies that rely on borrowing and debt to build mega-projects, while the dollar exchange rate daily ravages purchasing power for basic food commodities, energy products and others. What the manifestations of the electoral “picture” arrange for us, therefore, is a glimmer of limited political retreat, providing a margin of movement in the public sphere amid the escalating economic crisis, driven by the authority’s need for different tools to deal with extremely bad conditions. Since the National Dialogue, the ceiling of political and party work has been set, as represented by the continued surveillance of the “Big Brother” picture in its pattern of spread, as follows: loyalist parties, cardboard parties, and opposition parties within the National Dialogue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Election billboards dominating Egypt’s streets do more than advertise: this essay reads them as tools of symbolic power, surveillance and clientelism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":7169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[411,412],"tags":[18276,18266,18270,18274,11217,18275,18272,18273,18277,18271],"kateb":[1890],"class_list":["post-17934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-op-ed-en","category-politics-en","tag-crony-capitalism-egypt","tag-egypt-presidential-election-2024","tag-election-billboards-egypt","tag-hybrid-regime","tag-national-dialogue-egypt","tag-panopticon","tag-pierre-bourdieu","tag-political-clientelism","tag-samer-soliman","tag-symbolic-power","kateb-esam-osama"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/\u0646\u0633\u062e\u0629-\u0645\u0646-\u0627\u0644\u0633\u064a\u0633\u064a-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17935,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17934\/revisions\/17935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17934"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=17934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}