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Middle East: The Kiss of Life?
George Ziyyad Cairo
Many Egyptians hope that Gamal, the sonof President Hosni Mubarak, is indeed being groomed to take over
A favorite guessing game in Egypt in recent years has been "Who�s the next president?" Hosni Mubarak has never appointed a deputy. Analysts say that was a policy designed to maintain his grip on power when he took the reins as a relatively unknown vice president himself after Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated in 1981. But with Mubarak now 74 -- with numerous assassination attempts behind him -- the issue of who could replace him is becoming increasingly pressing.
Speculation has centered on two people: the colorless intelligence service chief Omar Suleiman; and Mubarak�s dashing 39-year-old banker son Gamal, who was recently appointed to a senior post in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
Since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ran into the ground in September 2000 with the eruption of the Palestinian intifada, Suleiman has taken on a more and more visible public role as Mubarak�s occasional envoy to Israel, to the Palestinians and to Washington. His face also began appearing in Egyptian state-owned newspapers. In short, he quickly became a somebody in the eyes of the Egyptian public.
Those betting on Gamal were vindicated in September when the NDP held its first general congress in 10 years. The gathering was carefully engineered to give the party a new "reformist" leadership, which is being pitched as a vanguard of a new Egypt.
"The old guard will remain, but in parallel with a new group led by Gamal Mubarak," said Mona Makram-Ebeid, a political commentator and a former member of parliament for the opposition Wafd party. "He will have great leverage to make change which he didn�t have up to now," she added. "Gamal is acceptable (within party ranks). There isn�t much resistance because of his age and his background, which is Egyptian but exposed to American and British culture," she said.
Gamal is being depicted by the state media as the mastermind of the new national drive for youth and popularity.
At the same time, President Mubarak appointed Minister of Information Safwat al-Sherif, a trusted member of the old guard who is close to 70, as the new secretary general of the party. Gamal was given a new post of party secretary for policies. Together, Sherif and Gamal now run the NDP.
Sherif is a Mubarak loyalist whose career began in the intelligence services of Gamal Abd al-Nasser in the 1960s. After a 1995 attempt on Mubarak�s life in Addis Ababa, the massive state information network over which Sherif presides made a concerted effort to sanctify Mubarak as father and savior of the nation. At the time, the government was beginning to win the war against Islamic militants waging an insurrection. While Sherif represents stability and the continuity of the ruling establishment, for many Egyptians, fed up with the stagnant mind-set of a ruling party that is seen as corrupt and set in its ways, Gamal represents the possibility of a more dynamic future for a country with a burgeoning young population.
Gamal, who speaks fluent English, regularly appears on CNN and is a master of Benjamin Netanyahu-style chic sound bites. He worked with an investment bank in London before returning to Egypt in the mid-1990s. Previously he had studied at the American University in Cairo.
Analysts conclude that Sherif�s job is to "polish" Gamal�s image in the next stage of the careful process of making the president�s son and potential successor acceptable to a country of 70 million people -- a country that prides itself on its pioneering role in bringing Western democracy to the Middle East by electing its first parliament in 1923, even if things went somewhat awry after the 1952 military coup.
Observers first began watching watching Gamal�s career when he returned to the country to take a position on the Egyptian-American Presidents Council of Businessmen set up by Clinton and Mubarak in 1995. In fact, he was taking the place of his older brother Alaa, who had been poised for a political career but became embroiled in accusations of corruption and influence-peddling to amass huge wealth, with unflattering allegations appearing in foreign, Arab and even some Egyptian opposition papers.
Then, in 1999, Gamal set up the Future Generation Foundation, a Cairo-based NGO with business community backing which promotes young Egyptians in business and public life. Associates involved in the project say Gamal and his father had considered turning the group into a political party, creating another state-backed party to rival the ossified NDP, but opposition from the NDP leaders persuaded President Mubarak that it was a bad idea. In 2000, Mubarak appointed his son to the NDP�s general secretariat. From then on, he has regularly been seen on television and with government ministers at major events of state, and the state media started lavishing huge praise on him as the face of the modern Egypt of the future.
Putting aside the issue of who his father is, many ordinary Egyptians as well as political observers welcome the meteoric rise of Gamal within the old-minded political establishment, and say they would even welcome his presidency. Many Egyptians, when asked if they think Gamal is being groomed as the next president, will answer "I hope so," so sick are they of the same faces ruling the country for the last two decades. Mubarak�s rare cabinet reshuffles have failed to invigorate popular faith in government, and his choice of moving Atef Obeid from minister of public enterprises to the prime minister�s position in 1999 met with particular disappointment around the country. Calls for Obeid�s removal have been frequent, though his defenders in the state-owned press have said he inherited an unfortunate legacy of economic problems that can�t be pinned on him. Still, his image singularly fails to inspire Egyptians with hope for the future.
So in Egypt�s tortoise-paced domestic political scene, the NDP conference was like an earthquake. Now slick television ads and posters around the country claim the party is all about "new thinking," the party�s new slogan.
Still, some political insiders emphasize change will be gradual. "The NDP has strived recently to renew its blood, but the road is still long before younger people take their role alongside the old guard," wrote Ibrahim Nafie, the editor of the state-owned daily Al-Ahram who is considered close to Mubarak.
For most of its 24 years of existence, the party has been run by the Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Yousef Wali and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal al-Shazly, who remained deputy secretary general. In September Mubarak, who is also the party president, set up the new Sherif-Gamal Mubarak alliance that cuts into Shazly�s turf. Wali was "pushed upstairs" with a newly created post of deputy president for internal affairs.
"The repercussions of Gamal Mubarak�s coup in the NDP appeared the day after the conference, when Sherif took up his new post by moving into Wali�s office and moving out his stuff," the opposition Al-Arabi newspaper noted. "Kamal al-Shazly�s powers were cut back and his wide empire was trimmed down by the creation of a load of mini-secretariats within the party�s general secretariat, with responsibilities previously in Shazly�s hands parcelled out to others, such as Zakariya Azmi, a big Gamal fan, who is now in charge of party finances," it went on.
The state press, for its part, sees chucking out part of the old guard as a stroke of genius. Mohamed Abdel Moneim, editor of the state-owned weekly magazine Rose al-Yousef and a confidante of Mubarak, wrote of "calm change whose undisputed hero is Gamal Mubarak." He credited Gamal with "giving the big party the kiss of life," and enthused: "What a great beginning."
The NDP is seen as corrupt and aloof, and in a sign of public disaffection it won its lowest number of seats in the 2000 parliamentary elections since former president Sadat created the party in 1978 to promote his peace with Israel and pro-Western policies. The party actually won less than 50 percent of the vote, but maintained its grip on power when independents joined in with it en masse. Opposition groups say the NDP rigs elections with police help to ensure majorities in parliament, then rubber stamps government policy.
The general feeling in Egypt, though, is that the writing is on the wall: Gamal is gradually being molded as leader and sold to an initially doubting nation as the best man for the job in the "coming phase of the march to progress and development," as the official rhetoric likes to say. Original misgivings that Gamal�s only credentials stemmed from being the president�s son seem to have dissipated as he has become better known.
Since his NDP victory, Gamal has been sitting in on cabinet meetings, though he has no cabinet position, and appeared at a meeting of Arab ambassadors with British Prime Minister Tony Blair on the sidelines of the Labor Party conference in Blackpool. Gamal is known to the American as well as the British leadership, and that�s an important assurance of continuity that Mubarak would want to get across to his Western allies.
But selling Gamal will remain tricky. Egypt�s intelligentsia balk at the idea of becoming another "hereditary republic" like Syria. Open criticism of the possibility is seen by some as one of the reasons that civil rights academic Saadeddin Ibrahim was tried by the regime and jailed for seven years.
"What I�ve heard is that it is the people around Mubarak who have been pushing for him to have Gamal as his successor. He didn�t want to at first," said one political analyst. Mubarak, asked directly about his son as his heir, dismissed the idea in a brief one-liner.
But political watchers have heard it all before: Many who now dislike Mubarak senior intensely remember his promise in the 1980s not to serve for more than two six-year terms. He�s now on his fourth and the state media said during the last vote in September 1999 that he should have a fifth. Indeed, some Egyptian professionals believe the Bush example has encouraged the Mubaraks and makes their project look more acceptable, so long as it is skillfully engineered.
Now Egyptians are wondering what Hosni Mubarak�s next move will be. A Western diplomat said Mubarak�s wife, Suzanne, has been pushing for him to step down soon. Some bet on Sherif being made prime minister, with Gamal, his partner in running the NDP, waiting in the wings. Mubarak could even bring Gamal into the cabinet, though that risks setting him up for unpopularity at a future stage, which could hinder his path to the presidency.
Whatever happens, when it comes to Gamal Mubarak�s future, for most Egyptians the intent has become clear.
November 4, 2002
Middle East
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