Authoritarian leader with penchant for bridges

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been criticised as a despot for crushing opposition lingering from a brief period of democracy, while winning praise from supporters for boosting security and driving an army-led infrastructure binge.
The former general began a third term on Tuesday after sweeping a Dec. 10 election overshadowed by the war in neighbouring Gaza and a faltering economy,a decade after he toppled Egypt’s first democratically-elected president.
Activists say tens of thousands of people were jailed in the ensuing crackdown, before Sisi turned his attention to state- and army-run mega-projects and development schemes.
The flagship project is a $58 billion New Administrative Capital rising in the desert east of Cairo, a site Sisi said would mark the birth of a new republic.
“We are not leaving Cairo, or Alexandria or Port Said or other provinces. We are moving forward with the old and the new together,” he said.