The numbers don't add up in “Sisi To 2050” campaign
Twenty-four days ago, supporters of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi launched an online campaign titled Sisi To 2050 to gather signatures in support of an extension of the president’s rule and to refer the initiative to both houses of parliament for endorsement. During this period, 43,698 people registered their support. However, these figures fail to reflect reality due to technical flaws in the registration process and frequent manual manipulation.
Al Manassa entered fake data across six separate registrations, all of which the portal accepted, issuing certificates for each one verifying support for extending El-Sisi’s presidency. Completing registration requires entering an individual’s name, phone number, national ID number, email address, governorate, age group, and, if applicable, political party affiliation. However, none of this submitted information is verified, such as through document uploads or confirmation codes sent via SMS or email.
The Egyptian Constitution currently bars El-Sisi from seeking reelection. Article 140 dictates that his current term is his last, ending officially in 2030. Consequently, calling for him to remain in power until 2050 would require a sweeping constitutional amendment lifting presidential term limits.
The website’s homepage displays a total participant tally, while the data and statistics tab features sub-sections detailing participant figures, including a feed of live submissions and daily endorsements. When a user enters their information, it appears immediately in the live submissions feed showing the latest entries.
However, tracking the platform over three consecutive days, Oct. 11, 12 and 13, revealed sharp discrepancies in the figures.
At the start of monitoring on Oct. 11, the homepage listed 37,956 supporters, rising to 41,882 on Oct. 12, an increase of 3,926 registrations. Yet the line graph at the bottom of the data and statistics page indicates that only 625 endorsement votes were recorded across both days combined. Furthermore, tracking the live submissions feed revealed that only 21 individuals submitted their data, including the six fake profiles entered by Al Manassa.
Before publication on Tuesday, the total count reached 43,698, adding 1,816 new registrations. However, that increase was absent from the site’s own chart, which logged only 315 registrations, while the live submissions feed displayed just 16 entries.
Al Manassa confirmed that these numerical discrepancies recurred consistently by reviewing archived snapshots of the website via the Wayback Machine, an Internet Archive service that preserves dated web pages.
A snapshot archived on Oct. 9 showed an overall count of 30,257, which surged by 7,699 endorsements over the next two days to the 37,956 recorded on Oct. 11, even though the platform’s chart showed that daily increases over that timeframe did not exceed 1,000.
In addition, while the website’s interface indicates that registrations began on Sept. 13, the domain name was only acquired a week later. Al Manassa verified this discrepancy using domain lookup records from ICANN, the organization coordinating the internet’s domain name system, which allows users to review registration and expiration dates as well as the managing registrar.
A lookup for the campaign’s domain name, sisi2050.com, showed it was purchased on Sept. 19, listing GoDaddy as the web hosting and site-building provider.
Notably, daily registration numbers remained nearly flat for roughly 20 days after the purported launch, hovering around 280 entries per day. A substantial gulf also exists between the cumulative daily total of 9,015 logged from Sept. 13 through Oct. 13 and the 43,698 endorsements advertised on the homepage.
Fake followers from the United States
Contradictory numbers are not confined to the website. The campaign’s Facebook page, which counted over 6,000 followers as of Oct. 12, also features fake accounts originating from various US states. These accounts use identical profile and cover photos, with page classifications linked to “beauty salon.”
Meanwhile, the campaign’s account on X had only eight followers, with platform data listing Saudi Arabia as the account’s country, an indicator that does not conclusively determine the identity of the website’s owner or where the campaign was founded.
As of publication, no political party or state institution has claimed sponsorship of the campaign. The initiative defines itself as an “independent civic initiative solely dedicated to collecting expressions of support and submitting them to the People’s Assembly and the Senate for approval. It is not a government entity and does not represent any government body.” So who is behind it?
The clearest clue emerged from the “certificate of endorsement” generated by the website for participants to download. A reverse image search tracking its appearance outside the portal led to an Oct. 3 post on an account belonging to Ahmed Halawa, whom Al Manassa later identified as the campaign’s founder. This was the earliest post featuring the image uncovered by the search, indicating the platform allowed certificate generation by that date.
Tracking his name and media appearances led to an interview on Al-Shams channel with host Yasmine El-Khatib on Aug. 3, 2026, in which he discussed Egyptian expatriates and the activities of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. The host introduced him as an entrepreneur and a “UN coordinator,” before asking him to clarify the title.
Halawa described “UN coordinator” as a United Nations role centered on coordinating among multiple countries, linking his position to his ownership of an American company investing in Saudi Arabia. Later in the interview, however, he characterized it as a public-service and volunteer role for which he receives no salary.
To verify the “UN coordinator” title, Al Manassa searched for Halawa’s name in Arabic and various English transliterations across indexed records of the United Nations and several of its agencies and programs, including the United Nations Development Program, United Nations Volunteers, UNICEF, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. No official record linked the campaign organizer to any UN role or mandate.
In a subsequently deleted Facebook post, Halawa attacked news outlets covering the campaign, maintaining that their reports would not undermine his efforts and insisting the initiative is an individual endeavor.
Further research uncovered an announcement directly connecting his name to the initiative. A website named “Akhbar Al-Watan Al-Arabi Newspaper” published a report on Oct. 5 stating that Halawa launched a youth initiative seeking 30 million signatures over three years to demand constitutional amendments permitting the president to remain in office until 2050.
By reviewing his Facebook posts, Al Manassa gathered information indicating his full name is Ahmed Magdy Rashad Ali Halawa, aged 35, originally from Dakahliya governorate and working in Saudi Arabia.
Al Manassa received no response to inquiries sent to Halawa seeking comment on the technical flaws marring the website or its contradictory metrics and data.
Sisi Until 2050 follows earlier signature-gathering campaigns with identical objectives, such as Kamel Gamilak in 2014, which called on El-Sisi to run for president, and Ashan Tibneeha in 2017, which urged him to seek a second term. It also mirrors campaigns supporting the 2019 constitutional amendments, which extended presidential terms to six years and allowed El-Sisi to stay in office until 2030.
The participant message highlighted on the campaign’s website urged what it referred to as the “People’s Assembly and the Senate” to “issue an exceptional law for President El-Sisi to continue ruling Egypt” in light of what it termed an “existential threat.”
This appeal reflects legal and constitutional confusion among the campaign’s organizers, as the initiative used a defunct parliamentary title, the People’s Assembly, rather than the constitutionally recognized House of Representatives.