Power shift in the Mubarak pyramid

Tall and gangly, the man on stage spoke woodenly despite the energy evident in his audience of Egyptian college students and recent graduates.

Tall and gangly, the man on stage spoke woodenly despite the energy evident in his audience of Egyptian college students and recent graduates.

Gamal Mubarak, son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the man most widely expected to succeed him, had not made much of an impression.

Then again, Egyptians say, Gamal Mubarak probably doesn’t have to.

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Egyptians have never experienced a democratic transfer of presidential power. As Hosni Mubarak, 79, begins the 27th year of his rule this month, many say they expect Mubarak’s family and ruling party, military officers, and security officials to decide on his successor.

If power passes to Gamal Mubarak, Egypt would join Syria, Jordan and Morocco — the latter two officially kingdoms — on the list of modern Middle East dynasties in which sons have taken over from fathers in governments of elites backed by militaries and security services. In Libya and Yemen, sons are also seen as the leading candidates to succeed their fathers.

In Egypt, “we didn’t choose Sadat, we didn’t choose Mubarak, and we’re not choosing the next one,” Zakaria Nahla, a 52-year-old salesman of furniture, said in a Cairo market.

Hosni Mubarak, who rose from the vice presidency when Islamic radicals assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, has never appointed a vice president or announced his preference for a successor.

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Most Egyptians call Gamal “Jimmy.” Educated in Egypt, Gamal, 43, left a job as an investment banker in London in 2000 to return home, and took a post as head of the ruling party’s policy committee.

Gamal is credited with putting his wonky inclinations to work by helping build a team of savvy, energetic officials around his father to overhaul the socialist-oriented economic policies.

Business-friendly changes such as cutting the overvalued Egyptian pound have helped the country achieve a 7 per cent growth rate this year and attract $11 billion in direct foreign investment.

“I think with Gamal, maybe, his influence is in… explaining ideas of economic reform to his father,” said Simon Kitchen, an economist.

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Gamal and his economic engineering seem remote to many Egyptians. Forty percent of them live in poverty. “Gamal has never taken a bus, never stopped at a red light, never met anyone who wasn’t cleared by security services,” said Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Cairo’s al-Dustor newspaper.