CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, sought on Thursday to play down a rare media spat with Saudi Arabia, which recently signalled greater conditionality over financial backing to allies such as Egypt,\u00a0Reuters<\/i>\u00a0reports.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia, along with other energy-rich Gulf states, has long provided crucial funding to Egypt, upping support after Sisi took power nearly a decade ago, and as an acute financial crisis took hold last year.<\/p>\n
The spat developed after two prominent Saudi commentators close to the Monarchy, Turki Al-Hamad, and Khalid Al-Dakhil, posted tweets in recent weeks criticising development failures since Egypt’s 1952 revolution and the dominant role of the military in the economy.<\/p>\n
Their posts were subsequently deleted.<\/p>\n
In an apparent riposte last week, Abdel Razek Tawfiq, Editor-in-Chief of Egyptian state-owned newspaper,\u00a0Al Gomhuria,<\/i>\u00a0wrote an editorial arguing that the “barefooted” and newly-wealthy countries had no right to insult Egypt.<\/p>\n
“The mean, the scoundrels and the nouveau-riche have no right to insult their masters,” he wrote, drawing on derogatory stereotypes and claims of historical superiority.<\/p>\n
Support from ‘brothers’\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
During a visit to a food plant on Thursday, Sisi said: “If we can’t say something good, we should remain silent \u2026 We only write to improve and strengthen relations, not the opposite.”<\/p>\n
He added: “We must also not forget the support our brothers have given us.”<\/p>\n
Egypt secured a $3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan in December that entails structural economic reforms as well as an expectation of new financing and rollovers of debt from the Gulf.<\/p>\n
Another well-known Saudi commentator, Ali Shihabi, later tweeted: “Egypt is a black hole that will never close unless the govt is able to make material structural reforms.”<\/p>\n
Tawfik’s article has been removed from\u00a0Al Gomhuria’s<\/i>\u00a0website and replaced by an editorial lauding Egyptian-Saudi relations as “historic and eternal”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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