MUBARAK THE PHARAOH

Wall Street Journal
July 15, 2004

Hosni Mubarak just returned to Egypt after two weeks of medical treatment in Germany. This is the longest absence in his 23-year reign. But it was also the first time ever that Egyptians were told that their 76-year-old president was sick, or that he even gets ill. Mr. Mubarak has been keen on maintaining his image of health, strength and youthfulness. Dyeing his hair is part of this public-image management. Half of his ailing cabinet, also in their 70s, emulate him, not only by dyeing their hair, but also in concealing their health conditions.

When Mr. Mubarak fainted while delivering a speech in parliament last November, with live TV coverage, it was no longer possible to conceal his deteriorating health. Rumors spread about more ailments following the "November fainting." Demands for the appointment of a vice president escalated, but Mr. Mubarak continued his stonewalling on the issue, which led in turn to a renewed wave of rumors about the grooming of his 41-year-old son, Gamal, to succeed his ailing father, in a scenario akin to that of Syria in 2000. So intense and paralyzing were the speculations that Mr. Mubarak had to call a press conference on Jan. 1 this year to dismiss the rumors as baseless: "We are not a monarchy. We are the republic of Egypt, so refrain from comparing us to other countries in the region. We are not Syria and Gamal Mubarak will not be the next president of Egypt."

Though this was front-page headline news the following day, Egyptians -- who have grown increasingly skeptical -- either did not believe Mr. Mubarak's disclaimer, or, worse, took it to mean that he intends to run for a fifth term. Mr. Mubarak is touted as the longest serving president in the history of the Egyptian republic. Should he rule for another term, he would exceed the combined total of all three presidents before him: Nagib (1952-1955), Nasser (1956-1970) and Sadat (1970-1981). Mr. Mubarak's reign is already the third longest in Egypt's 4,000 years of recorded history, and has outspanned that of the last four U.S. presidents.

Egyptians were expressively grateful to Mr. Mubarak in his early years as president, following the traumatic assassination by Islamic militants of his predecessor, Anwar al-Sadat, in October 1981. He managed to successfully confront and weed out those militants, and stabilize the country. True, in the process, Mr. Mubarak declared a state of emergency and resorted to several drastic measures. The number of detainees and political prisoners jumped tenfold, from 1,850 under Sadat in September 1981, to over 18,000, according to the 2003 report of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights. The number of prisons increased from 11 to 44, and torture is a routine practice. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have highlighted Egypt's human-rights record as one of the worst in the world in recent years. No wonder that Egypt's outgoing prime minister, Atef Ebeid, proudly lectured the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11 "to learn from the Egyptian example of terrorism, and to stop admonishing other governments about human rights."

Whether or not the Bush administration followed his advice is for Americans to judge, but after 23 years Egyptians have grown weary not only of the state of emergency, but of the entire Mubarak regime. They now realize that those early years of stability have been paid for with later years of utter stagnation and loss of liberty for all Egyptians. Mr. Mubarak's deceptive masking of his looks and health are symptomatic of nearly all aspects of his performance at home and abroad. He has presided over a catastrophic economic decline, and has taken to blaming, first, 9/11, then the war on Iraq, to explain Egypt's impoverishment.

Mr. Mubarak's top propagandist, Safwat Sherif, boasted about Egypt's leadership of "free media" in the region. Yet nearly every Egyptian turns to al-Jazeera or the BBC for reliable news even about their own country. As a matter of fact, Egyptians learned about Mr. Mubarak's latest illness first from al-Jazeera. When the state-controlled media announced the news several hours later, there was a public outcry against the notorious Safwat Sherif, prompting his resignation as minister of information after 22 years.

In May, Egyptians had experienced another jolt when the minister of youth and sport assured the nation that Egypt had sewn up enough votes on the FIFA Executive Board to host the 2010 soccer World Cup. When the vote was finally cast, South Africa was first with 14 votes, followed by Morocco with 10. Egypt was last -- with zero votes. To many Egyptians, this was as serious a calamity as the 1967 military defeat at the hands of Israel. The World Cup debacle, ironically, has become a rallying cry for the Egyptian opposition, not for dumping this or that minister but for a total "regime change."

At least five popular conferences of opposition and civil-society organizations have echoed the demand for political and constitutional reform in Egypt and the Arab world this year -- in January, March, June and July. This internal pressure for change preceded, and coincided with, President Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative, which was later adopted by the G-8 at the Sea Island summit in early June. Egyptians clamoring for political reform, however, are distancing themselves from the American initiative for democratizing the Middle East. Too close an association could be politically disastrous, given the anti-American sentiment in Egypt -- fed by the war in Iraq and the one-sided support for Ariel Sharon's aggressive policies against the Palestinians.

This has not been lost on the Mubarak regime either. To ward off domestic political pressure, its propagandists have accused Egyptian democracy advocates of promoting an "American agenda." Mr. Mubarak himself has taken the lead in rejecting the call for reform as being "alien and antithetical to the region's cultural specificity."

The internal pressure, however, is relentless. Some five years ago, a satirical novel titled "Death of the Big Man," by Ibrahim Issa, a young Egyptian journalist-novelist, was banned. The authorities considered it "blasphemous and politically insidious." The novel narrates the events of the last 72 hours surrounding the death of an 82-year-old Arab president: the intrigue; the jockeying for power; the schemes to cover up rampant corruption at the top; and the efforts to make sure of a successor who would sign off on post-dated clemencies for all the top aides of the dying president before announcing both his death and the impending succession.

Curiously, a clandestine edition of "Death of the Big Man" circulated in Cairo when the news of Mr. Mubarak's illness and surgery broke out. Though it is supposedly pure fiction, Egyptians who managed to secure copies have been comparing notes, matching the novel's characters with ranking figures in Mr. Mubarak's inner circle. The other pastime for many Egyptians has been the use of humor and the circulation of numerous jokes about why the president has been unable to appoint a vice president.

Today the public mood among Egyptians is to prepare for an Egypt without the ailing Pharaoh Mubarak, or any other pharaoh. They want no more than to elect a human being as president -- for a limited term in office.