24 June 2023; MEMO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi announced on Friday that he informed his citizens that he has "nothing to promise except work, work, work and patience", warning that if people in Africa do not find hope for life, they will move towards Europe.
This came during his speech in the closing session of the New Global Financial Pact Summit in the French capital, Paris.
Al-Sisi expressed, in a video clip shared by the Egyptian Presidency on its YouTube channel, during which he spoke in colloquial Egyptian dialect: "My speech today will be a little different than usual, and I hope you will allow me to speak in this way."
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The Egyptian president continued: "I will tell you about my experience in Egypt very briefly. In our developing nations, there are always promises being made by leaders to peoples in the elections to do this or that for them."
"In my [election] campaign, I never said that. Instead, I said I have nothing to promise you except work, work, work and patience, and I had never launched a project until it was inaugurated. We do not want to give promises and only implement a very small portion of that promise," he noted.
Al-Sisi was elected president in 2014 for a four-year term, then re-elected in the 2018 presidential elections.
Al-Sisi touched on the growing talk by the West about human rights, while downplaying the importance of other problems, such as illegal immigration: "We speak a lot about human rights, and I agree," but warned that around 27,000 migrants were confirmed dead while crossing from Africa to Europe over the past ten years.
He also warned: "If people in Africa do not find hope and a chance for life, they will move toward those who have the hope and the chance, here in Europe. We have nine million guests in Egypt."
