At Suez launch, Egypt channels ‘Game of Thrones’

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi wasn’t playing around when he officially unveiled the new Suez Canal on Thursday, but his national television station added drama to the broadcast by playing the theme music from the HBO series “Game of Thrones” in the background.

A snippet of the Egyptian state TV presentation was uploaded to The Independent’s i100 website.

The television producers, no doubt aiming for an uplifting effect, were surely not intending a jab at the president. But the “Game of Thrones” series follows the often-violent political machinations of warring factions vying for power in a fantasy medieval world; Sissi himself seized control of Egypt in a 2013 military coup.

It wasn’t clear whether Egyptian state TV received permission from HBO to play the theme music, but as the i100 reporter commented, “if el-Sissi was OK with overthrowing a democratically elected president, he probably isn’t too fussed about minor things like copyright.”

The Suez Canal’s new extension involved digging and dredging along 72 kilometers (45 miles) of the 193-kilometer canal, making a parallel waterway at its middle that will facilitate two-way traffic. With a depth of 24 meters (79 feet), the canal now allows the simultaneous passage of ships with up to 66 ft. draught.

The project was initially estimated to take three years, but Sissi ordered it completed in one — making it a feather in the cap of the Egyptian leader who hopes it will boost the country’s flagging economy.

The government says the project, funded entirely by Egyptian investors, will more than double the canal’s annual revenue to $13.2 billion by 2023, injecting much-needed foreign currency into an economy that has struggled to recover from the 2011 uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak and the years of turmoil that followed.

Associated Press contributed to this report.