Beyond El-Sisi, what Brazil and Chile teach Egypt about transition

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has announced that he will not remain in office after his term ends in 2030, and has proposed a thirty-month program in which the Military Academy would prepare future leaders, among them, naturally, potential presidential candidates. The idea has brought the question of succession back into Egyptian debate, and with it an uncomfortable possibility: a new president groomed inside one of the executive branch's own institutions, with the program's relationship to free candidacy and to the conditions of electoral competition left unclear.

Without speculating about intentions or rushing to predictions, it is worth turning to Latin America’s democratic transitions since the mid-twentieth century, particularly Brazil and Chile. They are not models to be copied, but they raise useful questions for Egypt: how can a transition begin on terms set by the incumbent authority, and how is its outcome ultimately shaped by the interplay of state institutions and political and social forces?

Managed openings 

Brazil’s military leaders launched a political opening in 1974, hoping to manage a gradual exit while preserving their influence. When direct military rule finally ended in 1985, it ended not with a popular presidential vote but with an electoral college, which chose Tancredo Neves, the candidate of a coalition of moderate opposition figures and defectors from the regime’s own party. Neves fell ill and died before taking office, and the presidency passed to his vice president, José Sarney, one of the military regime’s most prominent civilian supporters. The generals had thus handed power to a civilian from the old camp, under a settlement that kept part of the former elite’s influence intact.

In Chile, General Augusto Pinochet tried to engineer a transition of a different kind: his 1980 constitution provided for a plebiscite in 1988 on whether he should stay in office, with institutional safeguards to protect the army’s power. The opposition turned that plebiscite into a genuine political contest, and won. Voters rejected Pinochet’s continuation, and a civilian president was elected in 1989. Even so, Pinochet stayed on as army commander until 1998, and constitutional constraints on elected authority endured.

What do these cases say about the Egyptian proposal, and is preparing candidates through the Military Academy a way of renewing the ruling elite, or one part of a broader political process? The answer depends less on whether the next president has a civilian or military background than on their real independence, the freedom of the contest, and the ability of different political forces to field their own candidates. Above all, Brazil and Chile show that those in power can write the rules of a transition and still lose control of its outcome once the balance of forces shifts.

From pressure to participation

Neither transition was simply a negotiation among elites. In Brazil, major strike waves began in the late 1970s, and Lula da Silva emerged from them as a leader of the metalworkers’ union; in 1980, five years before military rule ended, he helped found the Workers’ Party. The party used the limited opening to contest the 1982 elections and steadily expanded its presence in legislatures and local government, while unions and popular movements fueled the 1984 campaign for direct elections and the debates that produced the 1988 constitution.

In Chile, the 1988 plebiscite followed years of protests and strikes, especially after 1983, involving unions, student movements, human rights groups, and working-class neighborhoods. This mobilization helped rebuild political life and gave the coalition that faced Pinochet a social base, though social movements and parties were not the same thing, and they disagreed over how far to compromise with the regime.

Egypt does not start from a blank slate. Before 2011, waves of labor protest swept the country, notably in Mahalla Al-Kubra, alongside independent unions and political and human rights movements that widened the public sphere. But the years that followed narrowed the space in which organizations could stay independent and sustain their alliances. A comparative study of Egypt and Brazil finds that the difference did not lie in whether labor protest existed; it lay in whether independent organizations could endure and convert social mobilization into political influence.

So what remains of these organizational experiences? Will the coming period allow unions, parties, and social movements to be rebuilt and their ties to society to deepen, or will political participation be reduced to competition for the presidency?

Happiness is coming

Chile’s experience is instructive here. The opposition coalition in the 1988 plebiscite recognized that reminding voters of repression and abuses, however important, was not enough by itself to win over those who feared disorder or the loss of stability. 

So the “No” campaign chose the slogan “Happiness is coming,” presenting change as an opportunity for a better future and not merely a confrontation with the past. It is the campaign Pablo Larraín depicts in his film “No.”

In Brazil, the Workers’ Party combined direct social demands with electoral work, developing its program and alliances through years of participation and defeat. Lula ran for governor of São Paulo in 1982, reached the runoff in the first direct presidential election in 1989, lost again in 1994 and 1998, and finally won in 2002. Repeated participation guaranteed nothing, but it gave the party organizational and electoral strength and the chance to refine its political program.

For Egypt, two questions follow. The first is whether earlier electoral efforts, including those of candidates who competed on an uneven playing field, left behind programs, cadres, and organizations that could last. The second concerns political discourse: criticism alone does not answer citizens’ anxieties about the economy, stability, and public services, but reassurance is no substitute for raising questions of freedom, accountability, and equal opportunity.

The promise and limits of transition

Brazil and Chile show that a transition initiated from within a regime can go in very different directions: it may amount to little more than a change of leadership, or it may open space to reshape institutions and political relationships. The outcome depends on the choices of those in power, the independence of institutions, the scale of social participation, and the ability of political forces to organize and compete.

The clearest shared lesson is that moments of transition do not start from zero. In both countries, years of organization-building, program development, social mobilization, and electoral experience preceded the end of military rule, even when the odds of success looked slim.

The debate over Egypt in 2030 should therefore not be confined to who will succeed the president. The larger question is whether political and social forces and credible alternative programs will exist to help shape what comes next, or whether the transition will remain a matter of choosing new leadership. Brazil and Chile offer no ready-made answer about Egypt’s future. What they do show is that those who engineer a transfer of power from above cannot, by themselves, determine the system that follows.