Egypt and Egyptians during Mubarak's Reign predicted what would happen to Hosni Mubarak. In this book, published by the Cairo based Merit Publishing House in 2009, Egypt's economics professor Galal Amin warns of the eruption of a volcano that could bring down the long-serving leader, resulting in what he called ‘Fragile Egypt'. Perhaps Mubarak's long reign was one of the reasons for the nation's fragility reaching a peak. In his preface to Egypt and Egyptians during Mubarak's Reign, Amin describes how the world witnessed the overthrow of many regimes and leaders, yet Mubarak was still sitting on the throne. He concludes his introduction to his book with an astonishing comment: “Presidents and kings come and go, except Mubarak. What a man!” Amin also predicts the overthrow of the regime and the stepping down of Mubarak, and supports this with evidence. “The stepping down had begun, without being announced to people. Perhaps the forming of Nazif's Government in the summer of 2004, while Mubarak was having medical treatment in Berlin, was the beginning of the actual stepping down that we didn't get to notice.” In his first chapter, Amin presents the Fragile State Theory of Karl Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) �" a Swedish Nobel Laureate economist, sociologist, and politician �" which states: “The country issues rules and laws which are not applied, not only for its legal loopholes, but because no-one respects the law… In this state of weakness, corruption prevails and bribery dominates.” He says that corruption comes from the executive and political authority and is then transmitted as a chronic disease to the legislative one, before reaching the judiciary and universities. Amin goes on to explain the reasons behind the emergence of this theory in Egypt under late President Anwar Sadat, who served from October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers eleven years later, which then became more insistent under Mubarak. He says that this might be attributed to the ‘waves of globalisation', which he sees are due to the floods of capitalists with their goods, who invest here without being taxed, something that only happens in Egypt. (Page 18) He believes that Sadat's open-door policy of the 1970s locally known as Infitah contributed to this fragility, explaining the weakness of the State vis-à-vis the administrations in Washington and Tel Aviv, other foreign capitals and also other Arab countries. The author explains that Egypt's relations with the US, Israel and even other foreign countries demand new people, who can cope with this new, open-door policy. They have to be assigned high posts like Prime Minister and ministers, as well as officials responsible of economy and media (especially the TV), in order to deal with this new trend in Egypt. “They should be selected carefully and they should be different from those who ruled in the 1960s and 1970s,” he stresses. Amin says that they mustn't be unhappy about the American policies in the region, adding that the people who occupied high political posts in the last 20 years of Mubarak's reign were less intellectual than those who ruled in the 1960s and 1970s. “They seem to have ‘social intelligence', but they know little about international policy or economic and social activity in multinational companies, the devastating impact of TV as it is now in Egypt, or even the declining state of education and the culture significance of the deterioration in the Arabic language.” He goes on to say that the changing of people who were very close to the President was one of the key reasons for the Fragile Egyptian State, adding that it was all down to personal gain. The reader can easily imagine what happens to a country whose rulers only think of personal gains. Thus, the writer concludes that, under Mubarak, globalisation, corrupt officials and statesmen conspired to create a weak nation without the power or desire to punish these criminals; a nation without a national project and solely concerned with satisfying foreign powers. In his book, the author also tackles the corruption in politics, economics and the media; the propagation of poverty and unemployment; Egypt's ties with other Arab countries; and the emergence of the idea of the inheritance of power. In conclusion, Amin refers to the weakness of the opposition, who were unable to make a change, because they were given some limited freedom of expression, providing they didn't harm the ruler and his policies. But now we have seen the emergence of new opposition movements, supported by the public, and the young Egyptians' successful uprising. They have managed to overthrow a regime that corrupted, humiliated and depressed people for 30 years.
