Faced with a drop in popularity, intermittent protests against rising prices, and calls for a mass anti-government demonstration, Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, is seeking to appease the country’s youth, soccer fans and activists with promises of change.

Mr. Al-Sisi’s efforts that include a one-time lifting of a ban on spectators attending soccer matches and promises of revisions of Egypt’s draconic anti-protest law as well as a review of the cases of youth detained without trial and monthly meetings with young people to follow up on resolutions of a national youth conference held earlier this month have however provoked sharp criticism even before they got off the ground.

An Egyptian poll reported this month that Mr. Al-Sisi’s popularity had dropped 14 percent.

… Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a recently published book with the same title, and also just published Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario.