Ahmed Shafiq

Ahmed Shafiq (born November 25, 1941, Cairo, Egypt) is an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as prime minister from January to March 2011 and stood as an independent in Egypt’s 2012 presidential election.

Shafiq was born into a politically well-connected family, with a father who served in Egypt’s Ministry of Irrigation. Shafiq opted for a military career, graduating from the Egyptian air academy in 1961. He then earned a master’s degree in military science and a Ph.D. in military strategy. He also served as a fighter pilot, seeing combat in conflicts including the War of Attrition (1969–70) and the 1973 October (Yom Kippur) War, during which he served under the command of Hosni Mubarak, who later became president of Egypt. Shafiq advanced through a variety of command and diplomatic posts that led to his appointment as chief of staff of the air force in 1991 and commander of the air force in 1996. In 2002 he left the military to head Egypt’s newly formed Ministry of Civil Aviation. During his tenure he oversaw the restructuring of EgyptAir, Egypt’s national airline, and the expansion and modernization of Egypt’s airports.

In January 2011 Shafiq was appointed prime minister by Mubarak, who had dismissed his previous cabinet as a concession to the antigovernment demonstrations gripping Egypt. In early February the protests forced Mubarak to cede power to a council of senior military officers. (See Egypt Uprising of 2011.) Shafiq remained interim prime minister following Mubarak’s ouster, but protesters soon began to call for the removal of Shafiq along with other Mubarak appointees still in government posts. Shafiq resigned in March, a day after making comments that seemed dismissive of the Egyptian protest movement during a heated confrontation with the novelist Alaa al-Aswany on a television talk show.

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Shafiq entered the first race for president in the post-Mubarak era, running as an independent, and was the only senior official of the Mubarak era to qualify for the May 2012 election. Shafiq’s close ties to the Mubarak administration and his positive comments about Mubarak led many Egyptians to fear that a victory for Shafiq would lead to a restoration of the authoritarianism of the Mubarak era. In a crowded election wherein no candidate received more than 25 percent of the vote, he placed second, advancing to a runoff with the first-place candidate, Mohamed Morsi of the Freedom and Justice Party (associated with the Muslim Brotherhood). For many Egyptians, the polarized results left them with the worst possible choices for president: a president from the regime they had just ousted or a president from an Islamist movement that already controlled the legislature. Shortly after the results were announced, an angry mob broke into Shafiq’s campaign headquarters in Cairo and set the building on fire. Nonetheless, Shafiq’s support was bolstered by loyalists of the ousted regime, such as businessmen and generals seeking stability, and by fear of a majoritarian government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, especially among the Coptic Christian minority.

After surviving a last-minute legal challenge to his candidacy, Shafiq was defeated in a close runoff held on June 16 and 17. A few days after the election, the Egyptian prosecutor-general opened an investigation into allegations of corruption and waste during Shafiq’s tenure as minister of civil aviation. He fled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was tried in absentia and found guilty, but was acquitted of those charges the following year, after Morsi’s government was removed from power.

After announcing in late 2017 that he would challenge Pres. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the 2018 presidential elections, Shafiq was deported to Egypt by the UAE. He dropped out of the race the following month, saying he was the wrong man for the job, though sources close to Shafiq said that the government had threatened to revive corruption charges against him were he to run.