PRESIDENT Gamal Abdel Nasser brought Egypt dictatorship, economic ruin and humiliation in the six-day war with Israel. On his sudden death from a heart attack in 1970 Egyptians erupted in grief; some 5m people mobbed the funeral. His successor, Anwar Sadat, freed political prisoners, revived the economy and won a peace agreement with Israel that got back what Nasser had lost. When he was assassinated in 1981, Egypt fell eerily silent. His funeral was attended by foreign leaders but very few of his own people.

To be fair, even Egyptians who loathed Nasser agreed with his aims and felt for his tragedy. And even Sadat’s fans grew to fear his increasingly mercurial temper and were relieved by his exit. Still, Egyptians’ contrasting responses to their leaders’ passing raises an obvious question. Hosni Mubarak, who has now been in power longer than his two predecessors put together, arouses little of the passion that either of them did. How will Egyptians regard his legacy?

Mr Mubarak is 82 years old, and in recent years he has spent much of his time away from Cairo, at the Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. His health is not good. Even before an operation in Germany took him out of action for six weeks this spring, Egypt’s president had suffered bouts of illness in full view of the public. In 2003 he collapsed while making a speech at the People’s Assembly, prompting the defence minister to lock MPs in the chamber until doctors had revived the president in an anteroom. Last year, upset by the recent death of a grandson, Mr Mubarak appeared ashen-faced and seemingly too infirm to descend some steps to greet an important visitor, Barack Obama.

Yet the Egyptian president seems to have no intention of stepping down. A few years ago he said that he would serve his country until his last breath and heartbeat. In his first speech following his recent surgery he declared himself stronger than ever in will and determination, vowing to fulfil his promise to “build the pillars of democracy”—an edifice which, at the current pace of construction, looks unlikely to be completed in the foreseeable future. When asked who will be the next president, his stock answer is an enigmatic “Only God knows.” Officials of the ruling party routinely answer questions about their candidate for the 2011 presidential election by pointing out that no one is as qualified as Mr Mubarak.

They mean the senior Mubarak, despite the fact that his younger son, Gamal, has played a remarkably prominent role in the ruling NDP for the past decade and often appears at his father’s side. Officially third in the party’s command structure, the 47-year-old former banker has long been assumed to be his father’s intended successor. Changes to the constitution introduced in 2007, allowing a select few candidates to emerge for presidential elections, were widely seen as a fix. The senior Mr Mubarak had repeatedly promised that there would be no “inherited” presidency, and the new arrangements make it possible for his son to be duly elected.

That may still happen, although many Egyptians believe that Gamal Mubarak’s chances are waning. He is a serious, competent manager and runs charity schemes that help the poor. Egypt’s successful economic liberalisation, too, bears his imprimatur. Supporters note that he is Western-educated, has lived abroad (his mother is half-Welsh) and, unlike every past president, is a civilian. But others see his apparent distance from the still-powerful army as a handicap. Not only does the younger Mubarak lack his father’s earthy charm, they add, but the wider public is showing an increasing aversion to dynastic politics.

Some think that the regime’s ageing inner circle might prefer to back a more seasoned figure from their own ranks. Omar Suleiman, the powerful head of General Intelligence, Egypt’s equivalent of the CIA, is often mentioned. The 75-year-old former general has gained an unusually high profile for Egypt’s top spy. But he is also seen as a staunch Mubarak loyalist, suggesting that he has no ambition for the job, and he lacks links to the NDP. Several officials in their 60s with experience as technocrats and in the military and intelligence services also seem to be in the running.

This guessing game says a lot about Mr Mubarak’s Egypt, where much of the regime and its workings remains opaque. The officer corps, for instance, has its own privileged networks of farms, factories, schools, shops and ostentatiously smart clubs. Early retirement and careful political vetting thins the upper ranks, presumably eliminating those with undesirable views. Unlike in Turkey, however, where the army has traditionally championed Ataturk’s uncompromising secularism, Egypt’s generals do not reveal their political inclinations. Cynics in Cairo hold that they have none, just business inclinations.

Below the surface, though, some broader trends can be discerned. One is that the class solidarity of those who created and sustained the revolution, many of whom came from provincial lower-middle-class backgrounds, has dissipated. The NDP, for instance, has its roots in Nasser’s single-party socialist state, but its current leaders are business moguls, lawyers and local strongmen. Most Egyptians now see their society as starkly divided, with the regime mostly looking after the interests of the rich but pretending to represent the poor.

Fresh eyes

An imminent generational shift may help to change that. Younger Egyptians have been spared the punishing experience of war, reject reliance on the state and are increasingly linked to each other and to the world through the internet, satellite TV and mobile communications. More sceptical, self-reliant, ambitious and socially engaged than their elders, they have grown impatient for a voice and a role. Recent years have seen a strong expansion in volunteer programmes, charity initiatives and protest groups, as well as a remarkable revival in the independent art scene.

Such energies have yet to be tapped politically, but the potential is there. For example, even if Mohamed ElBaradei’s bid to challenge the regime fizzles, the instant surge in enthusiasm for this former bureaucrat who shuns populist talk carried its own message. Similarly, an all-too-common incident of police brutality in June, when plainclothes agents beat a 28-year-old Alexandrian to death outside an internet café, would probably have been shrugged off in the past; but this time images of the battered youth spread virally like those of Neda Soltan, the protester shot in a Tehran street who became the martyred icon of Iran’s Green movement. Despite a government campaign to depict the victim as a drug user and thief, Egypt’s independent press refused to drop the story and thousands of Egyptians staged silent vigils to demand justice.

A popular joke reveals much about Egypt’s current state of mind. God is reading a newspaper when it suddenly strikes him that Hosni Mubarak has been at Egypt’s helm for nearly three decades. He instructs the archangel Gabriel to go down and tell the president that it is time for him to take leave of his people. “Oh really?” says Mr Mubarak, completely unfazed. “Where are they going?”

The president has a point. His people are moving, slowly but inexorably. Thanks largely to him, only God knows where.

Source: www.economist.com