The more things change, the more they stay the same. Bring it on (despite what many want, many in Middle East can't handle democracy): Egypt Clamors for Military Leadership - movement to nominate Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi as Egypt's next president is gaining pace, reflecting the strengthening public appetite to revive another military-backed authoritarian government.

From The Wall Street Journal:

A movement to nominate Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi as Egypt's next president is gaining pace, reflecting the strengthening public appetite to revive another military-backed authoritarian government.

The development signals Egyptians' yearning for stability and order amid the chaos, violence and economic distress that has enveloped Egypt since protesters forced the country's last military-backed autocrat, Hosni Mubarak, to step down in 2011, observers say.

 

Supporters of Gen. Sisi, the defense minister and head of Egypt's armed forces, announced that starting next week they hope their "Complete Your Favor" campaign will gather 30 million signatures to demand that he run for president.
 

Gen. Sisi, who ousted Mohammed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president, on July 3, said through a military spokesman that he doesn't want to run nor does the military support the candidacy of any general. The military-backed interim government says elections will take place by early 2014.
 

His fervent supporters say he has little choice. In the chaotic ferment of Egypt's post-coup politics, the people's will, expressed through signatures and protests, tends to carry the day. A successful petition drive could compel Gen. Al Sisi to nominate himself, they say.
 

"The decision is not Sisi's or the government's, it is the Egyptian people's decision," said Khaled Al Adawi, a writer for Al Wafd newspaper and one of the founders of the Complete Your Favor campaign. "Presidency in Egypt is a commission, not an honorary position, so if Sisi doesn't take the job when asked by the people, he will be putting himself in confrontation with the Egyptian people."

 

To be sure, there is no law backing up such a contention. And among the millions of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood—the grass-roots Islamist organization and political group that backs former President Morsi—Gen. Sisi remains deeply unpopular.
 

What's more, to many of the pro-democracy activists who worked to oust Mr. Morsi, the general's popularity is reminiscent of the loyalty that allowed Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of Egypt's first presidents, to exercise a dictatorship marked by rampant human-rights abuses throughout the 1950s and 60s.
 

"Some pimps want Sisi to run for president. That's what I call them—political pimps," said Wael Abbas, a prominent blogger who worked to unseat both Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Morsi and is now a vocal opponent of Gen. Sisi.
 

Gen. Sisi has acquired something like a cult following. His visage is baked onto cakes sold in Cairo and an image of bridesmaids carrying his poster while wearing Egyptian flag-patterned dresses has made its way around social-networking sites. Populist talk show hosts take out time to pay him elaborate, poetic compliments while cycling through photo montages of his face.
 

And despite his stated reluctance, Gen. Sisi has shown a propensity to follow public expressions of political will. The Complete Your Favor campaign mimics the "Tamarod" or "Rebel" petition effort against Mr. Morsi. The petition drive led to massive protests that prompted Gen. Al Sisi to remove Mr. Morsi from power.
 

Mr. Adawi said that like Tamarod, his signature campaign will be a precursor to protests in Cairo's central Tahrir Square intended to goad Gen. Sisi into the presidential race.
 

Over the weekend, a Sisi candidacy gained fresh support from former front-running presidential candidates Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian diplomat, Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist leader, and Ahmed Shafiq, a Mubarak loyalist and former prime minister who came second to Mr. Morsi in the 2012 presidential vote.
 

"May God give him good fortune. We would all support him and I am the first one to support him," Mr. Shafiq said in a rare television interview on Sunday. "If Sisi is nominated I will not run."

Whether he decides to run or not, the enthusiasm for Gen. Sisi underlines Egypt's renewed taste for strongman politics.

The public attitude shift is playing out over a backdrop of historical revisionism, in which Egypt's new government and feverishly nationalistic media are positioning the June 30, 2013, protests against Mr. Morsi as the legitimate revolution in place of the Jan. 25, 2011, demonstrations that pushed aside military-backed Mr. Mubarak.

 

"We're seeing a nationalist rewriting of Egyptian history," said Shadi Hamid, an Egypt expert and researcher at Brookings Doha Center. "It's not as if June 30 is something you add. It's something that is absolutely central to this new forging of Egyptian national identity."
 

That new identity, which Mr. Hamid referred to as "Egyptian chauvinism bordering on neo-fascism," looks a lot like the one that characterized Mr. Mubarak's regime. Only this time, the regime is backed by deep public support and calls for a crackdown on the Islamists who dominated politics less than three months ago, said Mr. Hamid.
 

After less than three months in office, the coup state's abuses have already exceed those committed under Mr. Mubarak, say human-rights groups. Security services have gunned down at least 1,000 Morsi supporters—an unprecedented number in modern Egyptian history—and arrested between 3,000 and 8,000 pro-Morsi protesters and hundreds of Brotherhood leaders, according to the Brotherhood, foreign diplomats and human-rights groups.
 

Even prominent secular activists who worked to oppose Mr. Morsi have faced threats of arrest for criticizing the military. Islamist television channels, blocked after Mr. Morsi's removal in early July, remain closed.
 

A 50-person committee charged with drafting a new constitution looks likely to award new powers to Egypt's military that would not only preserve its financial freedom but would also allow its top brass to nominate its own defense ministers—effectively setting the ministry apart from elected officials.
 

Egypt's state run newspaper reported on Saturday that prosecutors were preparing to investigate Mr. Abbas, the blogger, and more than 30 other activists for "receiving foreign funding." Prosecutors later denied the reports amid public outrage.
 

"They want to finalize the return of the old regime or even worse the return of the Nasserist regime from the 60s with the army running the country again, writing a dirty constitution and topping the state with a killer like al Sisi," Mr. Abbas said.