After weeks of hoping for a pluralistic election, the nation’s columnists are not at all happy with how the race is shaping up. Al Shorouk’s Emad El Din Hussein wishes that the state had pushed forward its candidate of choice into the race a little bit earlier in the game to avoid making his entry seem like such a sham. Engineering the elections in this way is a dangerously short-sighted policy that ignores the possibility of angering the populace enough to trigger another wave of political unrest, Mohamed Esmat says in the same newspaper. He also points out that the whole show was unnecessary because President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s re-election is a foregone conclusion, despite his popularity having eased from its previous height. Ziad Bahaa El Din tries to look at the silver lining, pointing out that people’s negative reaction is reason to hope that the population will not be politically passive forever and that they could become engaged in the political scene again soon.