 Cairo and other cities in Egypt are plastered with banners such as this one of General Adolf Atehal Sisi, Egypt's current strongman and assuredly the next president. Now aside from having six portraits of Sisi on the same poster, which hints dangerously at a building cult of personality, you'll notice that the banner is signed, and thus it tells that it's donated by a private individual or company, which brings up the matter of campaign financing. Now campaign financing is set by law at a maximum of 20 million Egyptian pounds, which is a little below three million dollars. However, the law left several loopholes. The first one is that there's no auditing, because the spending is only self-reported by the campaigns. And second and more importantly, it only accounted for financial expenses, which are done directly by the campaign, and that means that supporters were allowed to donate, quote-unquote, banners, billboards, cars, planes, anything really, as long as it was in-kind donations, it did not count towards the campaign total expenses. Now for a country which revolted against opacity and corruption, that feels like a really ominous beginning for a new presidency in Egypt.