The appointment of old-guard politician Kamal El-Ganzouri as prime minister of a national salvation government has further polarised the political scene, Gamal Essam El-Din reports The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) shocked protesters in Tahrir Square last week by appointing Kamal El-Ganzouri, a former prime minister under the regime of ousted former president Hosni Mubarak, to head a new national salvation government. The appointment was made after the SCAF accepted the resignation of the caretaker government led by Essam Sharaf, a technocrat selected by the Tahrir Square revolutionaries on 3 March to replace Ahmed Shafik, last of the country's prime ministers appointed by Hosni Mubarak. Sharaf fell from grace after the youth movements of the 25 January Revolution accused him of being a puppet in the hands of the ruling SCAF and its composition of army generals. El-Ganzouri, 78, the country's new prime minister, served as prime minister under Mubarak from January 1996 to October 1999 and was deputy prime minister and minister of planning under the government led by economist Atef Sedki (1986-1996). He was a popular figure during his years in office, leading Mubarak and members of the former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) to force him from office. El-Ganzouri was said to have a strong personality and was not acceptable to Gamal Mubarak, Mubarak's younger son, who saw him as a potential obstacle to his attempt to inherit power from his father. El-Ganzouri was against the policy of privatisation carried out by former governments, and he accused certain ministers, such as former finance minister Youssef Boutros Ghali, of making private fortunes as a result of the privatisation programme. In 1999, El-Ganzouri was replaced by Atef Ebeid, an economist in favour of speeding up the privatisations. Ebeid is now in jail, accused of profiting from corrupt privatisation deals and helping Gamal Mubarak's inner circle of businessmen to monopolise national markets. However, the fact that the Mubarak family had previously clashed with El-Ganzouri failed to satisfy the activists gathered in Tahrir Square to exert pressure on the SCAF to relinquish power and appoint a civilian presidential council. On 25 February, under the slogan of "Last Chance Friday," the protesters demanded that Mohamed El-Baradei, ex-chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), be appointed prime minister of a national salvation government in place of El-Ganzouri. The protesters demanded that Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Moneim, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamdeen Sabahi, a Nasserist who leads the nationalist Karama Party, be appointed El-Baradei's deputies. Later demands were for El-Baradei as prime minister and Sabahi and Abul-Ela Madi, chairman of the Wasat Party, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, as deputies. Representatives of the protesters met with El-Baradei on 26 November, who said that he would be willing to withdraw his candidacy in the forthcoming presidential elections in return for being appointed leader of a national salvation government. However, the SCAF confirmed El-Ganzouri's appointment as prime minister instead, El-Baradei himself being quoted as saying that "El-Ganzouri is a good prime minister and I support him." The rejection of El-Ganzouri's appointment by the protesters in Tahrir Square led to a counter- demonstration, dubbed a "million-man rally" by the "silent majority" of Egyptians, to be held in Abbasiya in eastern Cairo and near the headquarters of the SCAF and the ministry of defence. The Abbasiya protesters said they supported the SCAF because it was "the bastion of stability in Egypt" and rejected "the obstinacy and dictatorship of the Tahrir Square activists, who are trying to impose their views on all Egyptians." The Abbasiya protesters accused the Tahrir activists of obtaining money from the United States to spread chaos in Egypt. They voiced their support for El-Ganzouri, insisting that he was knowledgeable about economic conditions in Egypt and could make progress on restoring security and moving the economy forward. On 27 November, one day ahead of the beginning of the first stage of the parliamentary elections, a protest group called the Council of Al-Abbasiya Trustees prepared a list of eight figures it wanted to be appointed as cabinet ministers. El-Ganzouri told a press conference on 25 November that a new cabinet would not be formed before parliamentary elections were held. On Tuesday, he said that the new government would be formed today. He said that as a condition of being appointed prime minister he had been given additional powers, and that he had been asked to remain in office no later than the end of June 2012. "I agreed to serve the people because I am one of them," El-Ganzouri said in a statement on state television. "Please give me a chance to think and make proposals to the military council on the new government." El-Ganzouri said that until the new government had been formed, outgoing prime minister Essam Sharaf would remain in office and oversee the conduct of the elections. The most important reason why the Tahrir Square protesters have rejected El-Ganzouri's appointment to lead a national salvation government is that he is seen as being an old-guard politician and a Mubarak loyalist, even though the former president fired him after three years in office and did not give him a seat in the Shura Council, the upper house of Egypt's parliament. "For the second time, we are going to depend upon the old guard of Mubarak's regime. Why don't we give a chance to the young, instead of people who are 80 years old," asked one protester in Tahrir Square. Meanwhile, in Abbasiya the counter-protesters claimed that the Tahrir revolutionaries had recommended Essam Sharaf to the SCAF and that they should not now be given the upper hand in selecting a new prime minister.
