The sweeping cabinet reshuffle finalized on Wednesday—a frantic reordering of 14 ministerial portfolios—is being marketed by the Egyptian state as a "fresh start" for an ailing economy. It is a glaring admission of domestic failure and a strategic retreat into the archaic habits of a bygone era. 1 View gallery Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ( Photo: Benoit Tessier/Pool/Reuters )The headline of this reshuffle is the sudden elevation of Lieutenant General Ashraf Salem Zaher to the post of defense minister. The "new blood" Sisi has introduced elsewhere is already mired in the very rot it was supposed to fix. Rashwan’s new mandate will undoubtedly be to sanitize the regime’s failures and target any "foreign-funded" research that dares to point out the obvious: the Sisi regime is a hollowed-out military-industrial complex with a starving, frustrated population.

Source: Ethiopian News February 12, 2026 14:49 UTC