Egypt: three decades of Mubarak’s rigid rule

Egypt: three decades of Mubarak’s rigid rule

 

Mubarak has transferred executive power to Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif until he has recovered from a gall bladder operation on Saturday at Germany’s Heidelberg University Hospital.
Tests on Friday showed Mubarak, 81, was suffering from chronic infections in his gall bladder according to sources.
Mubarak has escaped assassination attempts at least six times since watching his predecessor and mentor Anwar Sadat gunned down at a military parade in 1981 by an Islamist gunman.
Born in 1928 in the Nile Delta village of Menufiyah, Mubarak rose through the ranks of the air force and fought in the October 1973 war with Israel that restored a measure of Egyptian pride.
He was appointed vice president to Sadat in 1975 and took over as president within two weeks of the murder of the first Arab leader to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Mubarak’s rule has been buttressed by an emergency law that saw the imprisonment and trials of both Islamist militants such as the ones behind Sadat’s assassination and critics of his regime.
His government, which rules the Arab world’s most populous country of 80 million people, is the frequent target of domestic opposition, ranging from Islamists to secular and liberal dissidents.
He has mostly been successful in extirpating the violent Islamist threats to his regime, quashing militant groups which carried out attacks during the 1980s and 1990s, and a resurgence of attacks on tourist resorts that killed dozens between 2004 and 2006.
His government’s ties with the United States and Israel have made him a target of criticism across the region, especially during the 2006 Israel war in Lebanon and last year’s Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip.
Domestic opponents have also accused Washington of turning a blind eye to his government’s human rights abuses, with rights groups saying torture and arbitrary arrests routinely take place in the country.
Egypt undertook some reforms in the 2000s but rebuffed pressure from former US president George W. Bush to free jailed dissidents as unacceptable interference in its domestic affairs.
The last decade saw an introduction of economic reforms while security forces cracked down on bloggers and opposition activists belonging to the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, which controls a fifth of parliament.
Through a series of constitutional reforms, the government has also made it harder for opposition candidates to contest presidential elections after the country’s first multi-candidate election in 2005.
Press reports in Egypt have suggested that his son Gamal Mubarak will likely succeed him but neither father nor son has made any clear statement on the matter.