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Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak came to power at a moment of national crisis after a
dramatic act of political violence coupled with an armed insurgency.
Thirty years later he is clinging to power, with more than 130 people
dead in the streets and with no clear successor.

Throughout the
intervening three decades and despite scores of empty promises, Mubarak
has done nothing to create an institutional framework for a peaceful
and democratic transfer of power in the Arab world’s most populous
nation. Instead he has perpetuated a system in which politics in the
conventional sense hardly exists, running the country by administrative
fiat as if it were an army or a corporation. Mubarak owes his
presidential career to President Anwar Sadat, who saw him as a loyal
subordinate and appointed him vice president in 1975.

At the time he
was commander of the air force, with no political experience or
ambitions. When Sadat summoned him to the presidential palace to offer
him the job, the most Mubarak expected was that he would end up as
Egyptian ambassador in some European capital, he said in a television
interview in 2005. Islamist revolutionaries gunned Sadat down at a
military parade in Cairo on Oct 6, 1981, and Mubarak, who was sitting
next to Sadat and was slightly injured, stepped into the breach, to
widespread relief among ordinary Egyptians.

Security and stability

Islamist
insurgents, incensed by Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel,
simultaneously tried to take over the southern city of Assiut. Mubarak
sent in the army to crush them. At the time his solid presence and
cautious demeanour had a calming effect on a country traumatised by the
assassination of Sadat and fearful of chaos and civil war.

But once installed
in power, Mubarak never offered Egyptians any vision other than
economic development under the same authoritarian system he had
inherited from the army officers who overthrew the monarchy in 1952.

Mubarak has spoken
about democracy whenever the occasion arises but his actions have never
suggested he understood the concept to include the possibility of early
retirement or losing power through elections.

He preferred to
talk about security and stability, portraying himself as a benign
patriarch protecting the country from an array of enemies, some real
and some imaginary. During a lesser crisis during the presidential
election campaign of 2005, when Washington was leaning on him to loosen
up, he dismissed with contempt the advice of intellectuals who told him
he needed to create real institutions. Until 2005 Mubarak was the only
candidate in presidential referendums. Even in 2005 he never deigned to
debate his main rival, liberal lawyer Ayman Nour,

who was then imprisoned for five years on dubious charges of forging signatures.

Economy picked up

Even economic
development was slow and patchy until his son Gamal, a former
investment banker, persuaded him to bring businessmen and neoliberal
economists into the cabinet. Economic growth picked up, hitting 7.2
percent in the financial year 2007/8, but meanwhile the gap has grown
between rich and poor, inflation has stayed high and the poor complain
that they have seen none of the benefits. On the political front,
little changed. Businessmen friends and associates of Gamal Mubarak
moved into the upper reaches of the ruling party, the National
Democratic Party (NDP), which has been one of the prime targets of the
current uprising.

More and more
complacent and unimaginative as he ages, Mubarak has condoned or turned
a blind eye to the gradual erosion of the rule of law, making a smooth
and broadly accepted transition of power more and more elusive.

Police have
tortured with impunity anyone who challenges authority, and corrupt
politicians have monopolised the political scene by rigging elections
and fixing the rules to exclude all rivals. Officials say voting is
fair and that it investigates any cases of torture. Mubarak has seemed
oblivious to the dangers. Asked last year who would succeed him, he
said: “Only God knows who will be my successor. Whoever God prefers, I
prefer.” U.S. ambassador Margaret Scobie, summarising Mubarak’s vision
in a cable leaked by Wikileaks, concurred. “He seems to be trusting to
God and the ubiquitous military and civilian security services to
ensure an orderly transition,” she wrote.

REUTERS