While the Suez Canal was initially constructed 150 years ago, it took a decade to complete the vital passageway that connects the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea. The expanded waterway that opens on August 6 was completed in only one year, just a third of the time originally planned. Swift completion of the $8 billion project is being touted by the government as a sign of its competence under President Abdel el-Sissi, the former military commander who ousted and jailed Egypt's first democratically elected president two years ago. “This is Egypt’s gift to the world. We promised and we delivered,” said Admiral Mohab Mameesh, the retired commander-in-chief of the Egyptian navy and chairman of the state-owned Suez Canal Authority, which owns and operates the waterway. The expansion, much of it funded by the sale of investment certificates to private citizens, involved widening and deepening the original waterway and adding a parallel canal nearly 22 miles long.