CAIRO - Ex-President Hosni Mubarak was too busy grooming his younger son, Gamal, to inherit the throne to take care of the nation's supreme interests. His close assistants and powerful officials also devoted themselves to helping Gamal fulfil his mother's life-long dream. The former First Lady, who loved fancy-sounding titles, yearned for and did her best to win the accolade ‘Mother of Egypt's President'. Gossipmongers inside the royal family's homes (the presidential palaces in Heliopolis and Sharm el-Sheikh) say that the 83-year-old former President helplessly gave in to his wife's overwhelming dream to have her boy elected President later this year. According to these gossipmongers, who include the ex-President's faithful aides, the royal family started arranging the prince's coronation way back in 2005, shortly after his father had been reelected yet again as President. The previous year, Hosni Mubarak had had critical surgery in Germany. He had more critical surgery there in 2010. He was so preoccupied with the boy's future that the head of the Mubarak family abandoned the crisis between Egypt and other Nile Basin states. The crisis, one of the most serious facing Egypt today, began when African countries campaigned to amend an agreement (signed in 1929) over Egypt's share of Nile water. Mubarak had no time to discuss Egypt's diplomatic tactics in its tug-ofthe-war with the other Nile Basin states. OK, I admit that he did occasionally find the odd five minutes to have a casual chat with his aides and water experts about this. As a result, the nation is now threatened with losing about 15 billion cubic metres of its annual quota (55.5 billion cubic metres) of Nile water. The threat facing Egypt grew when Burundi became the sixth state (following Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda) to sign an agreement empowering the signatories to unilaterally approve the construction of water and energy projects on the river. Press and diplomatic reports last week said that the agreement came as a big surprise to the former inhabitants of the presidential palace. Former Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Nasser Allam has accused the ex-President and his regime of disregarding the nation's supreme interests by ignoring appeals from Egypt's water experts to urgently intervene. Allam, whose statement amounts to accusing the ex-President of treason, says that Mubarak and his close aides deliberately concealed the reality of the developments in Egypt's talks with its Nile partners. “Although there was no sign of optimism about Egypt's supply of Nile water in future, Mubarak and his aides gave the nation a completely different impression. They falsely claimed that the other Nile countries had guaranteed Egypt 99 per cent of the water it uses,” Allam told the press last week. Whenever the former President chaired a meeting of water experts to suggest ‘the next move', he would get restive after only five minutes. Realising that Mubarak was bored, his private secretary, Zakaria Azmi, would swiftly throw out the experts. The comedian Talaat Zakaria, famous for his clichés and tedious chatter, once surprised the nation when he boastfully disclosed that he had spent two hours talking with the former President in the garden of the presidential palace, adding that they'd tackled many topical issues! In his shocking press statement, the ex-Minister accused the former President of refusing to use Cairo's diplomatic and regional clout to adopt a firm stance during talks with other Nile basin countries over Egypt's quota. “The longest time Mubarak even spent with his aides and water experts reviewing these negotiations was 15 minutes,”said Allam, adding that the ex-President didn't have a clue what was going on. The former Minister made this unhappy discovery when he was invited to have a unilateral meeting with Mubarak. After 10 minutes, Allam realised that he had outstayed his welcome. “Our discussion was interrupted when the ex-President asked me to prepare a detailed report on the history of the Nile water crisis and the areas of difference.” It must be admitted that the differences between Egypt and other Basin states erupted long before Allam assumed office.
