Sisi vows to improve Egypt's situation 'in two years'

Egyptian presidential frontrunner Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has vowed to improve the deeply polarised country's situation in two years if things go as per his plan, but said he would quit if there were protests against him.
"If things go according to the plan we have prepared, we will see an improvement in two years," the 59-year-old former army chief told Sky News Arabia in an interview yesterday.
Egypt's "problems will be over in two years", he added.
Sisi, who deposed Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi last July after mass protests against Egypt's first democratically elected president's rule, is expected to sweep the May 26-27 election.

When asked what he would do if protests also erupt against him as they did against former President Hosni Mubarak in early 2011 and later against Morsi in 2013, he said: "If the people go out (on the streets), I will ask them 'What do you want? I am under your orders,'" he said.
"I won't wait for the army (to intervene) ... The army acts according to the people's will," Sisi added.

Since Morsi's overthrow, more than 1,400 people have been killed and thousands of members of Muslim Brotherhood detained by authorities, who have designated the Islamist movement a terrorist group.

A court sentenced the Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and hundreds of his supporters to death last week over an attack on a police station in Minya in 2013 in which a policeman was killed.
Analysts say Sisi is expected to easily win the election. The only other candidate is leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi, who came third in the 2012 election won by Morsi.
Sisi is popular among Egyptians who supported the army's decision to remove Morsi from power. His supporters see him as the kind of strongman needed to end the turmoil dogging Egypt since a popular uprising ended Mubarak's three decades of one-man rule in 2011.

But Sisi is reviled by the Islamist opposition, which sees him as the mastermind of a coup against an elected leader and the author of a fierce crackdown on dissent, it said.
Egypt has been rocked by more than three years of political turmoil that toppled two presidents after massive street protests, a deadly crackdown on Islamist protesters and a spate of militant attacks that has left the country deeply polarised and the economy in a shambles.