by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
It was all arranged by the new and emerging powers that be in Cairo.
These people, many once ostentatious pillars of the regime, felt they had given the old man, octogenarian Hosni, more than enough time, to secret his billions and save his face. Unanimously they agreed, civil and military, it was time to move on before things got really out of control.
They all gathered before their television sets Thursday, February 10, 2011 ready to savor the victory at hand, certain they were about to hear the historic pronouncement they all wanted, something along these lines:
"I, Hosni Mubarak, having done my best for my beloved country these 30 years, now acquiesce to the people's desire for change. I now give them that change... and I ask for my country's blessing on me and forgiveness for any mistakes I may have made. Long live Egypt! Long live the Egyptians!"
It would, indeed, have been a classy end and made certain that what many were calling the "gentle revolution", ended gentle indeed.
But it was not to be.
One man was determined that any such words, at any time, at any place should never be uttered. And that man, Gamal Mubarak, constantly at hand in these waning days, had the dictator's ear. This was Gamal, omnipresent Gamal, the man who would be king. He was the Heir Presumptive, for whom Egypt was patrimony, not nation; the family business, not a sovereign people.
And he was determined that his father with all the trappings should remain in power until he, Gamal, was anointed; for to lose Egypt and the succession now was to lose them forever.
Credentials? Gamal Mubarak took the trouble to be born.
Autocracies, dictatorships, monarchies all suffer from one gigantic problem that democracies do not. In a democracy the people are trained to select and have the constitutional duty to elect each new president at given intervals. It is their right, often won at bayonet's point, and they protect it zealously.In such constitutional regimes, leaders emerge from the grass roots up, the chosen of the people.
Not so in autocracies. There leaders are foisted upon the people from the top down, by autocrats (all too often sustained by the military) who regard the selection of their successors as their God given right. In fact it often means nothing more than forcing upon an already long- suffering people the least dim member of the autocrat's addled brood.
And so it was in Egypt.
Hosni Mubarak, a man born into the lowest level of the scrimping lower middle class, quickly developed a taste for the finest things in life. They were, he reckoned, the just rewards of his very demanding position. The arc of his rule went something like this:
* first get into power * then remove all opponents * control police and military by lucrative deals * create a system of mass espionage * use terror and state sponsored brutality to maintain your rule...
.... and, having worked so long, so hard, hand pick your successor and give him everything a la MacBeth.
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be king What thou art promised.
And so Hosni Mubarak, the man who had everything but the successor to give it to, set about the immemorial task of autocrats of every epoch: to turn inadequate family members into autocrats, too.
This is a very demanding, almost impossible task, indeed, because the circumstances that forged the autocrat and turned him into a nation-running entity are not present in the heirs... who famously lack the wiles, the grit, the determination and the drive to subdue a people and control them.
And so it was in Mubarak's Egypt, a textbook case of the seasoned dictator who had been given nothing and had mastered the art of taking everything... attempting to give it all to someone who had never had to take anything because he was given everything.
It was so with the lion's whelp, Gamal.
Gamal became the Heir of Egypt by default; his elder brother, Alaa, declined the honor which then fell upon the second son. But Gamal, an educated man, a man who was trained to understand the making and movement of money, was an improbable candidate to continue the autocracy and protect the Mubarak legacy and money siphoning enterprises.
Gamal lacked everything that had enabled his father to control a great nation and to reach grasping fingers into so much, so lucratively.
He wanted Egypt all right... but he overlooked the inconvenient truth that to control that seething land meant having skills investment bankers like himself never have and can only imagine. He was fastidious, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, lacking both the guts and gumption of his old man. In short, he was not a chip off the old block.
He was also deeply unpopular with the people of Egypt; no surprise this. After all, who likes the spoiled, pampered rich kid who has been given everything and worked for nothing? We aim to trip him up every chance we get... and a nation was waiting for that chance.
But if Gamal could not control Egypt in the way of his father, he could control... papa Hosni. And he strained every muscle to do just that.
In Mubarak's last days an ancient drama played itself out, the drama whereby heirs without support or the talent for securing it, do everything to control the autocrat who controls everything else before that autocrat's regime passes into history.
The autocrat himself, one senses, having shown the world that he was no paper tiger, but a man who gave way only to force majeure, was prepared to leave..... even content to do so. But at every turn there was Gamal, importunate, insistent, insinuating. He was not so prepared to depart.
And so he, with the last supporters, plus royaliste que le roi, gave his father the worst of services, changing the last address from one of statesmanlike withdrawal to bluff, unsustainable bluster. It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder, humiliating, embarrassing, futile, stunningly reversed in a day... thereby fully demonstrating why the son was manifestly inadequate.
No doubt the exiles, as they left Cairo in a caravan stuffed with hastily packed riches, gave way to the themes of the remainder of their lives, recriminations, reproaches, regrets. And Gamal? He peered out the window and saw his dreams of empire fading fast away, and forever; doomed to remember everything that might have been, to forget nothing.
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books and an avid art collector.
Republished with author's permission by Sylvia Kinzie
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