#ThatsEnough: Egypt corruption hashtag that shook Sisi regime used a million times

A hashtag opposed to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has been tweeted more than one million times, becoming the number one Twitter hashtag worldwide for the second day in a row on Tuesday.

The hashtag, #ThatsEnoughSisi was launched on Sunday after a construction contractor, Mohammed Ali, called on Egyptians to use it.

Over the past three weeks Aly has made videos detailing alleged corruption by Sisi and the Egyptian authorities.

Social media sites initially blocked Ali's videos after an Egyptian television channel, Al-Hayat, claimed copyright over them. The block was removed a few days later.

Ali alleges that Sisi contracted his company to build several luxurious residences for himself, including five palaces in the recently built Fifth Tagamou area of Cairo and an opulent villa in Alexandria.

In addition, Sisi is building a presidential palace in the proposed new administrative capital of Egypt, located near Cairo, which is ten times the size of the White House in Washington.

Ali also called on Monday for Egyptians to demonstrate next Friday against Sisi’s government. A new hashtag "#We've_passed_a_million" was launched on Tuesday to celebrate the success of the initial hashtag.

Meanwhile Ali launched a third hashtag called "Wait_for_me_Sisi" warning the autocratic Egyptian president, "You'll see what the Egyptian people will do to you".

"The second part of this movement will be to go down to the streets in all [Egypt's] provinces on Friday to demonstrate for an hour, if Sisi ignores the demands of Egyptians who don’t want him in power."

On Saturday Sisi appeared on television to respond to Ali's claims of corruption, but did not directly address the details of the claims. Instead, he defended his decision to build palaces, saying they belonged to the state, not to him.

"I will keep building and building, but not for myself," he said about the palace construction drive.

The dispute between Ali and Sisi began when Aly claimed that Sisi had not paid him for millions of dollars worth of contracting work. Ali, 45, is a film actor as well as a building contractor and his family enjoyed close ties with Sisi.

Among the one million plus tweets were one which said "debts are increasing, poverty rates are rising, and living standards are collapsing and what’s Sisi's answer? 'Yes I've built palaces and I'll build more and more… It's all for Egypt… I'm going to build a new state". 

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