Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi on Saturday strongly criticized an e-campaign that was launched last month on Twitter using a hashtag calling for his resignation.
He said at the two-day Sixth National Youth Conference at Cairo University that the campaign has upset him.
“I’m trying to get you out of this rut and you do a hashtag saying ‘Leave, Sisi’. Am I saddened or am I not saddened?” he said. "In this case, I am saddened."
In mid-June, the Twitter hashtag “Leave, Sisi” was the top trend in Egypt on the social media platform, yet no official source has commented on it back then.
Sisi was sworn in for his second presidential term early in June as he was re-elected with 97 percent of votes in March polls.
“Don’t think that we have a magic wand to build a human being,” Sisi told the people in the youth conference.
He explained that the process of rebuilding the human's personality requires social interaction.
“We must emerge from the state of economic, social and moral need, and the government alone cannot achieve that," Sisi told his citizens.
“You need to cooperate with the government if you want to give your children a real new picture of the Egyptian identity that defies its era.”
He moved on to stress on the importance of correcting the religious discourse. He said that the “divorce rate has amounted to 44 percent, and there are nine million children without two parents at home and 15 million children whose parents are [basically] separated."
Sisi addressed those having fear that religious discourse reforms would make the creed collapse saying that promoting war and violence as the norm is quite detrimental to religious core values.
Egyptian Human Development Strategy Session was inaugurated in the first day of the conference in which Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly attended.
The second day of the conference will feature a special session on “Developing the Health Insurance System”, which will be attended by the Minister of Health Hala Zayed and a number of deans of medical schools and young doctors.
Sisi will also answer some of the questions by university students via “Ask the President" online initiative.
