With the Egyptian presidential elections less than three weeks away, it is expected that both presidential candidates should be discussing their platforms and starting a debate on the direction they intend to take this troubled country. The campaigns should be at full bore, with events, public appearances and TV interviews to rally voter support. So far, of the two candidates running, only Hamdeen Sabahi is doing that, while his opponent, and the likely next president, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been running the most curious campaign in the history of all political campaigns by simply not campaigning at all.

After never appearing on Egyptian television in any format other than delivering a speech, Sisi finally made his first TV interview this week, and it was not an on-air interview, but rather pre-recorded and also allegedly edited by his campaign staff. His absence in the media has been the source of much speculation, with many voices claiming that his handlers are making him avoid the media, as to not let his views affect his widely alleged popularity. Those voices seemed vindicated once the interview was aired: Sisi appeared terse and controlling, unable to engage or nullify his interviewers’ meager attempts to scrutinize him or his views. It didn’t help that until this day the Sisi campaign hasn’t been able to provide his voters with an electoral platform, with one of its members stating to the media that they are doing this intentionally, to avoid “any bickering” over his vision for the country. This would be a fine example of the old Egyptian proverb “an excuse that’s worse than the sin,” but given what has been known through sources about his campaign, it is somehow fitting.

Before delving into the numerous problems that the Sisi campaign is suffering from, a quick recap of its structure would help explain why the problems are occurring. The campaign is made up of a consultative body on top that is handling the strategy, and has people from the 2012 Ahmed Shafiq campaign handling the grassroots work and voter mobilization, with a third separate group of businessmen and military personnel preparing the platform.

The first problem that faced the Sisi campaign was its messages. With Sisi's voters supposedly being an amalgam of various groups, it is impossible to produce political messages that don’t alienate one of them. If Sisi chooses populist messages, the rich will believe that he is truly another Nasser and flee with their money; if he chooses a pro-investment messaging, the poor will believe him beholden to rich businessmen and an extension of the Hosni Mubarak era. If he speaks of rights and freedoms, he will alienate the social conservatives, and if he goes against them he will alienate the liberals. The campaign's solution became to remain vague, produce emotional patriotic messages and keep the man out of the media as much as possible. Once that problem was solved, the problem with the platform reared its ugly head: Sisi explicitly asked for a platform that is nonpolitical and economy-focused, believing that policy and economics can somehow be mutually exclusive. Once the platform arrived, filled with nothing but national projects and investment plans, the consultative body started objecting to the lack of policies regarding women, minority rights and any of the other hundred issues that plague Egyptian society. The platform was immediately sent back to be re-edited, and now it seems to have been shelved altogether.