In a time of collapsing public confidence in the political classes across Europe, Orbán can claim to be unique – a gifted, popular strongman with the most formidable electoral mandate in the EU.
Back at Galal's chocolate shop, buoyed by the success of their Sisi franchise, the owners will soon unveil a new series of chocolates coated with the face of Anwar Sadat – Egypt's strongman during the 70s.
Hungary's strongman prime minister, Viktor Orbán, delivered a stinging broadside against Brussels on Thursday, likening EU bureaucracy to Soviet tyranny and casting himself in the mould of Hungarian heroes fighting to free the country from foreign domination since the 19th century.
Because if there is no bad, how could good get mastery over the bad?" It is a binary, polarising outlook that recalls the tactics of another strongman leader, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.
The situation is due in part to the army's decades-old popularity, argues Bassem Sabry, and the fact that many Egyptians – following a turbulent two-year democratic experiment – remain more comfortable with a strongman at the helm.
The strongman sent soldiers to the streets with whips to enforce traffic regulations and ensure commuters formed orderly queues at bus stops.
Then, when he was deputy prime minister and vying for the leadershop held by his patron, the Malaysian strongman Mahathir Mohamad, he was accused of sodomising his wife's driver.
Egypt is poised to return to an era of strongman leadership, almost three years after the fall of former general Hosni Mubarak, after the army's governing council gave its blessing for army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to run for the presidency.
