Face Time with Bigwigs: Gamal Mubarak, Hosni Mubarak's son (right), debates with (from left) Middle East envoy Tony Blair, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in a BBC World Debate at the 2008 World Economic Forum on the Middle East in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images)
Among North Africa's Dictators' Row--Mohammed VI in Morocco, Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Muammar el Qaddafi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt--Mubarak, at 81, is the oldest, longest-serving, and next to Qaddafi (depending on Qaddafi's mood), most repressive of the bunch, though they all, with Qaddafi's exception, pay lip service to democratic and humanitarian reform to stay on the lucrative side of American aid and weaponry.
Mubarak, in power 27 years and the quote unquote winner of five consecutive six-year terms as president, is feeling his age. He rose to power as Anwar el Sadat's vice president. But Mubarak never appointed a vice president of his own, fearing that of he did so he would not only seem to be grooming a successor, but encouraging one to succeed him before he was willing. Dictators don't like competition.
But even this latest of pharaoh knows he's not immortal. Since the earlier part of the decade, Mubarak seems to have been grooming his son Gamal, now 46, for the job. Gamal's debutant ball was the 2002 National Democratic Party convention (the NDP is the president's party; it uses the word "democratic" the way North Korea and the old East Germany, among other dictatorships, have used the word: as an unfunny inside joke). Back then Mubarak père decreed the establishment of something called the Policies Secretariat and made Gamal its chief. It was a fancy way of dressing up nepotism in an important-sounding job, though in reality the job was little more than resume-padding in the shadow of the father's allies.
Read the rest of "From One Mubarak to Another."See Also:
- Bouteflika and the Parody of Algerian Democracy
- Will Hillary Clinton Dare Unveil Morocco's Hypocrisy?
- Tunisia Still Blocking Human Rights Monitors from Its Prisons
- Qaddafi Celebrates 40 Years of Dictatorship in Libya
- Hosni Mubarak's Labyrinth
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