There are a lot of theories spreading about the protests planned for 11/11, and I cannot really keep track of them because my Arabic is weak. From what I have gathered, some people think that the Ikhwan are behind the idea, but are trying to keep a distance from the event to maintain plausible deniability. Some people think the regime is behind the idea, and there are a number of sub-theories to this notion postulating why the regime would want protests. One explanation is that Sisi does not want the IMF loan to be approved because he does not want to fulfill its conditions; he therefore wants to make the situation in Egypt appear too volatile and dangerous to implement the IMF reforms.
The idea is that Sisi simply wants loans from anyone without conditions, so he pretends to be committed to the policy reforms in order to get financial support, but then he does not want to enact the reforms, and the 11/11 protests will give him a pretext for backing off from the remaining Austerity measures required by the IMF. That seems pretty far-fetched to me. Sisi has been implementing the IMF programme point by point ever since he seized power, and the completion of the reforms was never a precondition for the loan, just agreement to the terms.
No one involved in the negotiations, whether from the IMF side, or the regime side, has any illusions about what these reforms will mean. The elites will benefit, and the population will suffer. The government has been actively trying to promote a positive spin about the loan and its accompanying Austerity measures on social media ever since people began to voice their opposition in messages to the IMF and to executives of multinational corporations. It is ludicrous to suggest that Sisi is in any way resistant to the reform program. No, the truth is that the regime has started to fear a real public backlash; the potential for widespread unrest. This is something they are trying desperately to subdue. It makes no sense that they would actually want protests to take place.
However, there are some peculiar things to me about the 11/11 event. The strangest thing, in my opinion, is the fact that the promoters of these protests have not said anything whatsoever about the IMF loan, nor about the Austerity measures. That is conspicuous, if not outright suspicious. And this silence is perhaps the strongest evidence that the Ikhwan have a hand in the event, because they refuse to criticize neoliberal policies, since they themselves believe in them.
From what I can surmise, there is broad interest in participation in the 11/11 protests from people who have no party or group affiliations, that automatically will make it difficult for it to be a “managed” event; even if there may be a desire by some organizers to control it. What I hope is that the protests will not follow the standard model of marching in the streets and gathering in the public squares to simply provide the security forces with a training exercise in crowd control. I hope that they will be genuinely disruptive and target the real institutions of domination and oppression; the offices and facilities of multinationals and foreign investors; and I hope that they will raise slogans that address the relevant policies of dispossession and exploitation, and that they articulate specific opposition to the IMF loan.