HOW HE SEES IT Road to democracy goes through Cairo

By AMANDEEP SANDHU
GLOBAL BEAT SYNDICATE
CAIRO -- For a leader whose best day at work is when nothing new happens and who assiduously avoids the news media, 76-year-old Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is frequently making news these days due to his ill health. Since his nationally televised near collapse last November during a speech to open parliament, discussion about Mubarak's successor has raised the anxiety level among Egyptians.
Mubarak's recent announcement temporarily transferring power to Prime Minister Atef Obeid while he underwent back surgery in Munich has raised speculation whether Mubarak will pass the political baton to his banker-turned-politician son Gamal, thus keeping alive the Middle Eastern tradition of dynastic succession. But the growing level of disquiet in Egypt makes Gamal a hard sell -- and the Egyptian army's keen interest in the transition makes it less likely that Egypt will follow the dynastic pattern of widely practiced in the Middle East.
Gamal, 41, who spent six years in London working for Bank of America after graduating from American University in Cairo, is said to represent the new generation of Egyptians -- a population two-thirds of which is under 35 -- who feel disaffected from "old guard politics." The economic reforms introduced at the beginning of 1990s have spawned a younger generation at home in a world of cell phones and reality television programs beamed from pan-Arabic satellite stations in Lebanon and the gulf.
Open governance
In contrast to the father-figure political administrative style of his father, Gamal understands the need for more inclusive and open governance. The recent images broadcast on the national channel of a ruling National Democratic Party meeting with an exasperated looking Gamal toying with his pencil as he sat among the old guard septuagenarians, gave experts reason to believe that he is impatient with the old form and style of Egyptian politics.
But the growing public debate in Egypt following Hosni Mubarak's first health scare has lessened the chance of Gamal's becoming his father's successor. Ever since Hosni Mubarak has been in charge of things, the golden rule in Egyptian journalism has been that while everything else is fair game, you cannot criticize the president or his immediate family. Prime Minister Atef Obeid therefore takes the flack for the failures of government, and although Hosni Mubarak has made him the interim leader, he remains hugely unpopular.
In light of economic problems stemming from the war in Iraq and instability in the wider Middle East -- an almost 50 percent devaluation of the Egyptian pound and a ballooning deficit -- Mubarak's standing has been under critical scrutiny, and his efforts to groom his son for political succession have come in for particular criticism from the Nasserite Al-Arabi and Al-Shaab newspapers.
Twice, President Mubarak has publicly denied that Gamal will succeed him. In a 2001 Newsweek interview, he unequivocally stated, "My son is not going to be the next president." Again, in a January interview on Egyptian radio, Mubarak said, "The regime in Egypt is republican, and there is no hereditary transfer of power." Son Gamal, at a lecture last year at his alma mater, denied that he wanted to turn Egypt into a dynastic republic or that "running for president" was on his mind.
Old guard
If his father dies suddenly without appointing a successor, that decision will fall to the old guard of ruling party politicians and army officers. They will want to select someone with military connections, as has been historically the case in Egypt, and the head of Egyptian intelligence, Omar Suleiman, is a leading possibility. If the president does makes it to the next elections, however, he might push his son Gamal to run in an open race with other contenders -- and the result might not favor a dynastic succession -- but it would serve democracy in Egypt and throughout the region.
All important political trends in the Arab world in the last 50 years -- from nationalism to socialism to Islamism -- were anchored in Egypt. Democratic transition in the region will be no exception. True representative democracy in the Middle East will have the best chance to flourish if Hosni Mubarak sees Egypt through fair and open elections next year.
X Amandeep Sandhu, a political sociologist who specializes in Middle East, is Chancellor's Fellow at University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a 2003 J. Armand Bombardier Internationalist Fellow at the American University in Cairo. This article was written for Global Beat Syndicate and distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.