What lies behind attempts to promote former president Hosni Mubarak's only vice president as the country's next president, asks Dina Ezzat There was a time when many people would have been pleased if ousted former president Hosni Mubarak had named his influential chief of General Intelligence and effective right-hand man, Omar Suleiman, as vice president. Last year, when the nation was anticipating a scheduled presidential election for this autumn, there was even a short-lived campaign for Suleiman for president. However, that was during the last five years of the Mubarak regime, when it was clear that younger son Gamal Mubarak was being groomed to succeed his father as president of Egypt. Following the deposition of Mubarak on 11 February, Suleiman has had a steadily receding appeal, especially after he was appointed Mubarak's first and last vice president after close to three decades in power and only a few days before the end of his rule. This once influential cornerstone of the Mubarak regime was transformed in the eyes of the public from being a possible saviour to being a figure too closely associated with Mubarak himself, who is as disliked now as he was during his time in office. As a result, a furore broke out this week when it emerged that a controversial Facebook poll conducted by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had reported a surge in Suleiman's standing as a possible candidate in the forthcoming presidential elections and ahead of opposition leader Mohamed El-Baradei, who had kept his leading position unchallenged from the launch of the poll until its closing on 19 July. The angry reaction migrated from the virtual world of Twitter and Facebook to the real world when the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm informed its readers that Suleiman's advance had been secured through rigging the poll. "General Suleiman has nothing to do with any rigging, and he has never said he has any intention of nominating himself," said a close associate of the retired vice president, adding that Suleiman "has no plans, none that he has spoken of anyway, to run for president." The SCAF poll, which solicited much criticism from political groups and observers alike who have expressed scepticism over its motives and methods, had proposed voting on a list of potential frontrunners, including some who had expressed their intention to run, like El-Baradei, Amr Moussa and Hamdeen Sabahi, and others who had expressed no such intention, including Suleiman and Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's last prime minister. According to observers' accounts, Suleiman had no knowledge of the SCAF's intention to include his name in the poll before it was put out for voting. Suleiman, the same sources say, had all but retired when he appeared on Egyptian TV to announce that the president had decided to step down on the evening of 11 February. The most he has been doing since, according to sources, is to lend his advice when it is asked for. "He wants a peaceful life, and anyway it is an open secret that he does not have the best rapport possible with the leading figures of the SCAF," said one informed source. To judge by the analysis of members of several political groups and parties, the inclusion of the names of Suleiman and Shafik in the SCAF poll was a test balloon to see if the young political activists, the effective voting force on the social networks, would be willing to accept the idea of an ex-military man as president. The sudden advance in Suleiman's ratings, and the subsequent announcement by Shafik, forced to retire as a result of public pressure following the end of Mubarak's rule, that he was not excluding plans to run for president himself, alerted those who fear that the military plan to rule themselves rather than to allow a civilian regime to take over. "The military is not planning to leave" became a repeated statement in the discourse of political activists and their comments on the online social networks. "I think this would be a very difficult scenario to see materialise. I think it is clear that Egyptians want a civilian president and that anyone with a military background is unlikely to have the support of the voters," commented Manar El-Shorbagui, a professor of political science. Suleiman in particular was a highly unlikely scenario, she argued, in view of his close association with Mubarak. El-Shorbagui also said she was "infuriated" by suggestions that Washington could intervene to enhance the chances of a particular presidential candidate, such as Suleiman, who is known to have supported the previous regime's stance on Israel. "I think it should be clear by now that the Americans cannot decide for the Egyptian people. They may have a preferred candidate, and this preferred candidate would obviously be the one who serves their interests best. But it is clear that after the 25 January Revolution they cannot impose what they want," El-Shorbagui said. Washington had already been keen to promote Suleiman as the successor to Mubarak during the last days of the revolution, she said. But, "it did not work then, and it will not work now." "Despite the delay and the hiccups, I still believe that the SCAF will ultimately hand over power to an elected civilian authority," El-Shorbagui said. "I see no decision on the part of the SCAF to support a candidate for the presidential elections who has a military background," said Amr El-Shobaki of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. El-Shobaki said that the Suleiman affair should not necessarily be seen as part of a conspiracy by the SCAF. "It might well be just the initiative of some sympathisers of Suleiman -- as simple as that," he said. El-Shobaki also does not give too much attention to the SCAF poll or its results. "It was a misguided idea from the beginning for the SCAF to launch this poll on the presidential candidates at a time when we don't even know when the elections will take place, whether in late 2012 or early 2013," he said. "And it does not take a poll to know that if you solicit the views of the social network community, like on Facebook, you will get El-Baradei first. But if you go to talk to people in the streets, it will be Amr Moussa who will come out first," he said. For El-Shobaki, the SCAF knows that a Facebook poll does not count for much, since the indicators on Facebook straw polls before the referendum on the constitutional amendments had "indicated a majority against the amendments," when in fact the yes vote was overwhelming. Suleiman is not part of any future plans that the SCAF might be entertaining, he said, and a "convoluted poll is not an indicator of a desire to run an ex-military man as president, or indeed of anything in particular."
