CAIRO: A recent campaign to promote the nomination of Gamal Mubarak — son of incumbent President Mubarak — for the presidency in 2011 is nothing but a fiasco, general coordinator of Kefaya Abdel-Halim Qandil told Daily News Egypt on Monday. The campaign was recently launched by a newly-formed group called “The Popular Coalition to Support Gamal Mubarak.” “This campaign was likely initiated by a number of hypocrites and mercenaries who seek to please Gamal or the ruling party to achieve specific goals like running in the coming PA elections in November,” Qandil added, ruling out the possibility that the campaign could accomplish anything significant. “All arrangements made throughout the past 10 years to prepare Gamal to succeed his father [do not seem to achieve their target],” Qandil argued. Wall posters that put forward President Hosni Mubarak's 47-year-old son, also head of the policies secretariat of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), as a potential candidate for the 2011 presidential elections were recently spotted on walls in some lower-income neighborhoods. Some posters carry the slogan “Gamal…Egypt” with his photo on them. Coordinator of the coalition Magdy El-Kurdi was quoted in Al-Masry Al-Youm as saying that the group currently boasts 4,000 members. Al-Kurdi, who had abandoned the leftist Tagammu opposition party to launch the pro-Gamal Mubarak campaign, added that “prominent businessmen and political figures were not encouraged to join.” The question of who will succeed President Mubarak has been the subject of wild speculation over the past few years, but has regained impetus recently with rumors of Mubarak's failing health. While many opposition leaders argue that Mubarak has been grooming his son to succeed him, both father and son have consistently evaded the issue when asked for a comment. In May, President Mubarak told an Italian reporter that “only God knows” who would succeed him. Mubarak was addressing a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome, his first international visit after undergoing gallbladder surgery in Germany earlier in March. Despite strong official denials that Mubarak's health is deteriorating, the president's failure to attend the current African Union Summit in Uganda has raised further questions about the status of the president's health. “I think that the issue of nominating Gamal Mubarak has not been decided yet,” Nabil Abdel-Fatah political analyst at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies said.
