President Hosni Mubarak's recent high-profile dismissal of rumours that his son Gamal is being groomed for the presidency might not have fully settled the succession question, reports Gamal Essam El-Din On New Year's Day, President Hosni Mubarak put a decisive end to a rumour that had been growing stronger over the past three years. In an interview with a state-owned radio station, Mubarak said his 40-year-old son Gamal would by no means succeed him. "Talk of inheritance of power in Egypt is nonsense," he said. "This is a rumour which some created and liked to believe. There is no inheritance of power in Egypt because Egypt is a republican regime." Implicitly referring to Syria (where Bashar, the son of late President Hafez Al-Assad, took office in 2000 upon his father's demise), Mubarak said, "if a certain country saw an inheritance of power, Egypt will not be the same. It will not happen here." The rumours started, Mubarak said, when Gamal joined the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Mubarak said it took a week of pleading before he allowed Gamal to join the NDP. "They told me he could help upgrade the party," Mubarak said. "I hope there will be 40 or 100 young people as active as him so that I have a broad base of young leaders to choose from." Although the radio interview covered a spectrum of crucial domestic and international issues, it was Mubarak's comments about succession that took the spotlight. And it was 's rise in the ranks of the NDP over the past three years that certainly pushed the once-whispered question of succession into the public debate. The younger Mubarak joined the party in the wake of its poor performance in the 2000 parliamentary elections, becoming a member of an ad hoc committee entrusted with reforming the party. When he was appointed chairman of an NDP policy- making committee, the opposition said the powerful new Policy Secretariat was especially tailored to smooth his transfer to power. Observers say the new committee is even more influential than both the party's secretariat-general and even the government itself. 's three trips to the United States were also somewhat controversial. While an opposition paper alleged that the visits were meant to assure Washington that Egypt's next president would be liberal, pragmatic, and relatively Americanised, independent MP Adel Eid asked Prime Minister Atef Ebeid "what constitutional authority [had] to visit America and talk to political and economic officials there about public issues?" Every now and then President Mubarak would respond to these types of moods by publicly emphasising that Gamal's role was confined to reforming and activating the NDP. At one point he told Newsweek magazine that, "Egypt was not Syria, where Bashar Al-Assad, son of the late President, took over." For his part, Gamal said -- to an audience at the American University of Cairo last May -- that "running for president has never been on my mind". These kinds of denials were ineffective because, as one opposition paper claimed, "they do not provide a clear-cut statement that will not be running for president." In June, Islamist-leaning lawyer Essam El- Islambouli filed a lawsuit against President Mubarak for "leaving the vice presidency post vacant", suggesting that this was meant "to enable a smooth succession for his son Gamal". Leaders of four major opposition parties also met in June to form a united front meant to "pressure the regime into embracing sweeping political reforms, foremost of which is curtailing the president's powers". An engineer named Mohamed Nada, meanwhile, was arrested in Zagazig for spraying walls with the words, "No to inheritance of power in Egypt." Nada was released five days later. While the succession question reached its peak after President Mubarak was forced to interrupt his speech due to a bout of the flu during the opening of parliament on 19 November, observers also agreed that the war on Iraq and its aftermath -- including ongoing US calls for a more democratic Egypt and Middle East in general -- played a major part in setting the mood for the debate. Cairo University Constitutional Law professor Yehia El-Gammal told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "it was the first time we hear such a clear-cut assertion that inheritance of power in Egypt is entirely ruled out." El-Gammal and most other constitutional experts and political analysts, however, also seem to agree that the president's statements must be complemented by measures aimed at ensuring that the country's next president is democratically elected. One group of analysts -- including El- Islambouli and Cairo University law professor Ibrahim Darwish -- think that Mubarak should quickly appoint a vice president. According to Darwish, the constitution clearly states, "the president of the republic may nominate one or more vice-presidents, define their jurisdiction, or relieve them of their posts." Darwish told Al-Wafd newspaper that although the word "may" might suggest that appointing a vice president is optional, the fact that it was mentioned makes the matter obligatory. "It would have been optional had it not been mentioned in the first place," Darwish said. Unlike his late predecessors Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat, Mubarak has never named a vice-president. Another camp -- led by El-Gammal and almost all major opposition parties -- are calling for Article 77 of the Constitution, which deals with the manner in which the president is elected, to be amended. El- Gammal said that in September 1971, when the current constitution was passed, Sadat asked that Article 77 -- which states that the president may only be re-elected for two terms -- "be maintained [in order to show] that there must be a time limit for all those atop political and executive posts". In May 1981, El-Gammal said, Sadat asked that Article 77 be amended to state that "the president of the republic may be re-elected for other terms," with the word "other" replacing "two". El-Gammal said, "we want that this article be revamped to again state that the president may be re-elected for just two terms, with each term being just six years long." He also suggested that Article 76 be amended to state that the president be elected using a direct ballot, in order to allow other contenders to compete for the post. As it stands, the article gives the People's Assembly the right to nominate the president by two-thirds majority. This nomination must then be confirmed via a popular referendum. According to El-Gammal, the article was drafted in this manner because, in 1971, it was thought that electing the president using a direct ballot could potentially turn him into a dictator since "the president might think the direct ballot places him on equal footing with parliament, without being accountable to parliament." El-Gammal said the opposite had occurred; "33 years have shown us all that parliament has become a toy in the hands of the presidency and the ruling party." As it stands, argue El-Gammal and all major opposition parties, the constitution gives the president unprecedented and sweeping powers (even more than were enjoyed by the pre-1952 monarchy), the most supreme of which is the complete lack of accountability to any authority. As such, said El-Gammal, "we want an accountable president with a specified term in office who is selected by the people in a fair and democratic election." When President Mubarak was re-elected to a fourth term in 1999, he won by 94 per cent of the vote. The next presidential election is set for 2005. El-Gammal said that unless the above amendments are implemented, Egypt would once again watch a one-candidate referendum conclude with Mubarak getting some 95 per cent of the vote.
