It is a difficult task for anyone who follows the news in Egypt to foresee what will happen tomorrow. There are no institutions that conduct opinion polls and the information comes only from one source, the government; making it difficult to check its credibility. To add to this, no one can rely on the opposition political parties as true representatives of the people, as they in turn are parties that got the go-ahead from a government-controlled commission and whose members originated from the ruling party. Not only that, but the regime has weakened them so that they have in effect become ‘headquarters that have newspapers' and who are willing to sign contracts with the ruling party in exchange for one or two seats in parliament, leading to a lose of credibility and driving the voting public away.
After remaining in power for 27 years, Egyptians seem to have lost hope of a change and think that their President will rule them forever...
President Mubarak is now 80 years old and has been the ruler of Egypt since the assassination of the late President Sadat on 6th October 1981 by Islamic extremists. Before becoming President, Mubarak had been the vice President for 6 years. He confessed that he was surprised when he was appointed to this post, adding that when President Sadat called him, he was presuming that he would appoint him as a governor or an ambassador in London at best.
And just like his astonishment at becoming Sadat's deputy in 1975, he was just as astonished when he left his home as the President's deputy in the morning of 6th October 1981, and came back in the evening as a candidate for the Presidency, which he took following a referendum on 14th October. And now Mubarak has been re-elected for a fifth term which will run until 2011. Adding to this, the ex-American ambassador in Cairo, Francis Richardoni, who left his post last month, told reporters that the Egyptian President "may run for a sixth term in 2011".
Lots of Egyptians take Richardoni's words seriously and the proof of that is the joke that spread in Egypt on 4th May when the President celebrated his 80th birthday. The joke was: an Egyptian citizen went to the President on his 80th birthday, gave him a turtle and told him: "This turtle, Mr President, will live for 400 years." The President replied: "Well then, we shall see..."
President Mubarak is the third longest ruler in the history of Egypt, behind King Bibi the second (2281bc - 2181bc: lived 100 years and ruled for 90 years and King Ramses the second (1290bc - 1200bc) who lived for 90 years and ruled for 60 years.
The frequently asked question in Egypt nowadays is "the absence of the President", mainly because Mubarak, since taking power and who was once a deputy himself, refuses categorically to appoint his own deputy. The Egyptian constitution allows him to appoint a deputy but doesn't oblige him to do so. This situation makes the question of Egypt after Mubarak a problematic one and it also raises other issues like: "the successor", the emergence of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood Movement (which gained 88 seats in the last parliamentary elections) and of the military's grip on power.
The questions go on until we reach the final question of Egypt falling into chaos. "What will happen if the President goes tomorrow?" This is the question that we need to answer by raising 4 further questions.
1. The question of inheritance:
Opposition media ceaselessly talk about a possible inheritance despite Mubarak's denial of any tendency towards allowing his young son Gamal (who is 41 years old) to succeed him.
The influence of Gamal Mubarak is continuously growing. He holds the post of Assistant-Secretary General of the National Democratic Party (NDP) (the ruling party that is headed by his father). This makes him the third person in the party, after his father and Safwat Ash-shareef, who has held the post of General Secretary of the NDP. In addition, Gamal is also the President of the consultative Assembly (one of the two Assemblies that form the Egyptian Parliament). He is also the Secretary of the Commission of Policies, responsible for making the policies of the party. Billionaire businessmen along with university professors and many new liberals are members of the Commission of Policies.
Most of the people that make up the inner circle around the President's son in the Commission of Policies are young, unlike the inner circle around his father in the presidency palace where the majority are in their seventies.
The age gap between the two generations may be the factor behind the news circulated about the hidden struggle between the two groups: the President's group and the President's son's group, with renewed gossip every time there is a ministerial cabinet reshuffle. While, on the one side, Gamal Mubarak's group press to gain ministries for its businessmen members, the President's group, on the other, press to hold on to what it regards as key ministries.
The growing influence of Gamal and his men within the ruling party, as well as worries about Hosni's health and his ability to continue in power due to his old age, fuels speculation about the possibilities of inheritance. Both the opposition and government backed media insists - in my view with no solid proof - that the Presidency will definitely be inherited by Gamal. This has created an atmosphere of hopelessness where people have resigned themselves to accepting the idea. As for the government backed media, the prophecies of an inheritance have helped to ease the pressure on it, leading to the President's son being treated as if he were the next President, giving him priority in its newspapers', just after news of the President, and along with high ranking officials like the Prime Minister or the heads of parliaments' two Assemblies.
Despite this, for many reasons, I view the possibility of inheritance unlikely: some are related to Gamal Mubarak himself and some related to him being the President's son.
Gamal is not a hugely popular figure, firstly because he is the son of a President who has ruled Egyptians for the last 27 years, and secondly because they don't see an end to his rule in the near future despite his old age. He is also the son of a President who they blame for the serious deterioration of their standard of living; 40% of the population live under the poverty line, the spread of unemployment, the loss of free health care in addition to the deterioration of the governmental education system which is obligatory and constitutionally free, the growth in the number of illiterates and school-leavers and the reflection of that on social life in the form of the break up of the family structure that Egyptians regard with the greatest value in life, which in turn has led to the emergence of the phenomenon of abandoned children in the streets (2 million, according to non-governmental figures).
It will be difficult for Gamal to win in any ‘free' Presidential election because many Egyptians see him - unlike his father who's background is in the lower end of the middle class - as a member of the aristocratic class which does not care about the worries nor the problems of the poor.
There are also some objective issues which prevent him from becoming President. One of them is that he gets his power from being the President's son and that he will most likely lose half of it in the absence of his father. The other half of his power comes from his alliance with businessmen, but they - in the worst case scenario - will withdraw their support if they feel that their bets on him won't be profitable and that he won't get the public's support, in which case Gamal will lose the other half of his power.

2. The question of the Muslim Brotherhood:
The Muslim Brotherhood movement doesn't hide its desire and will to rule Egypt. According to the United Nations' Human Development's report in 2004 (page 80), the Muslim Brotherhood has a strategy to get to power by 2018.
The movement is 80 years old and it was created - paradoxically - in the same year that witnessed the birth of a child in a northern city of Egypt; named Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, who became President and whom the movement opposes and tries to oust from power. The Muslim Brotherhood's claim is that they would create a non-theocratic state, but its opponents dispute this and counterclaim that it will - undoubtedly - get rid of democracy once it gets to power.
The movement was formed by a teacher called Hassan Al Banna, as a ‘clerical' group, in the city of Ismailiya (near the Suez Canal). There are historical facts that point towards its relations with the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect which rules Saudi Arabia in an alliance with the Saud royal family. The group went from being clerical to becoming involved in politics; it then created an armed organisation which carried out two assassinations before 1952, the year in which a group of army officers seized power.
In 1956, ex-President Gamal Abdennasser held the group responsible for trying to kill him, which led to many of their members being arrested. He then dissolved the party and considered them to be unlawful. In 1965 Abdennasser dealt a huge blow when he arrested many of their members and executed one of their leaders, Sayyid Qotb. This led many of the group to emigrate, the majority of which went to Saudi Arabia where they were welcomed for various reasons. Some of these reasons include the hatred of the royal family towards the ‘revolutionary' Nasser and the fear of his ideas spreading in their land, and the closeness of the ‘Brotherhood's views to that of extremist Wahhabi Islam which engulfs the minds of Saudis.
The Seventies saw Sadat making an alliance with the Islamists to get rid of the Nasserites and Marxists. The exiled Muslim Brotherhood's members came back to Egypt having amassed great wealth in the Saudi oil state. At the time, Sadat tried to create his own political program to distance himself from Nasser's socialism; he said he wanted ‘the state to be based on science and faith together'. He created many political parties - unlike Nasser who banned them - and adhered only to one party which reflected his own version of socialism. But Sadat didn't give the Muslim Brotherhood the right to have a party; he also didn't lift the ban imposed on their party by Nasser either. So the group stayed secretive, but close to the regime at the same time, which led to many more extremist groups leaving it, one of them being the group that assassinated Sadat in 1981.
Following a huge blow by Nasser in the Sixties, the Muslim Brotherhood have been trying to get to power by employing political means based on health, education and charitable work instead of violence. Using this method they have made many alliances with various political opposition parties which led to the impression that they were practicing opportunism just to get to power.
They made an alliance with the liberal Wafd party in the parliamentary election of 1984 and gained 8 seats. Their next alliance was with the Alaamal and Alahrar (two socialist parties) in the 1987 election, gaining 36 seats. But they gained 88 seats in the last parliamentary elections of 2006 without allies, having presented their candidates as ‘independents'.
No one can deny the fact that the group has huge popularity in the streets, that it is the most organised political group and the best at mobilising its members. As an example, its use of SMS messages to amass 150,000 people within 24 hours to attend the funeral of its ex-leader Ma'mun Alhudhaiby was seen as a show of force. But this doesn't mean the group can control the population to get to power, Egyptians are moderate people and they refuse to allow an extremist group to have authority over them. As for the seats that the group gained in the last elections, it happened - most probably - due to the people's rejection of the corrupted National Party and their resentment towards the weak opposition parties. It doesn't necessarily show that the group is ‘growing' in popularity, its own students failed to get 20% of seats in the process of choosing members of the students union.
It is unlikely then that the Muslim Brotherhood can take power, not in the near future at least. Their image as a religious group disguised as a political one, which will not slip the minds of people, the lack of a clear civilian program as well as the opportunism in their alliances and the Egyptian people's tendency towards moderation will prevent this.
3. The question of the military:
On 25th May 2005, President Mubarak surprised the country by announcing his intention to amend article 76 of the constitution which deals with the way the President of the Republic is chosen. He wanted to amend it in a way that would permit the election of the President in a free direct vote, with more than one candidate standing. A general referendum approved the amendment suggested by the President despite the opposition of many people to the way the article was amended and its tough rules on the opposition and independent candidates' conditions to be allowed to nominate them. The article nonetheless broke the relation between the military and government and pushed them away from it.
Article 76 stipulates that the candidate to the presidency must have spent at least one year in a high position within a political party. Alongside this, Egyptian law also forbids the participation of the military in politics as it bans them from casting their vote in elections.

Before that, the President was chosen automatically from the military, as it happened with Sadat who was Nasser's deputy, subsequently becoming the President and who then chose Mubarak - an airfield high commander - as his deputy. The process by which all of this happened was by simply presenting the candidate in a general referendum, where the result was always 99.99% in favour.
Things have been run this way since the military coup in 1952, but the amendment of article 76 gave power back to civilians. Despite this, it is hard to say that the military were cast-away completely from power. Mubarak is a military man despite his persistence on not wearing a military uniform since the start of his presidency, even during military festivals. The absence of a clear candidate to replace Mubarak within the National Party and in other parties as well, may make the interference of the military more likely in order to protect the regimes stability and to prevent the country from plunging into chaos. According to article 76, the army is not permitted to present a candidate for presidency, although it is possible that they can present a retired military person as a candidate in a transitional phase if there was no general consensus on one particular candidate.
4. The question of chaos:
We cannot put the question of chaos aside by relying solely on the Egyptian's being peaceful people, who lean towards stability and have the oldest centralised state in the world.
There have been a lot of changes in Egypt during Mubarak's rule, where the changes can be summarised by saying that "the poor got poorer, and the rich got richer", and the term "billionaire" is now a very common one.
According to the Prime Minister, inflation has risen and had reached 16% by last April. Egypt also witnessed high rises in the price of food, fuel and construction materials. Wages have remained the same despite the rise in prices. All these have led to political unrest where no day passes without sit-ins, strikes, or demonstrations.
The biggest event so far was a strike that was organised by a group of youths through the internet site Facebook, on 6th April, on the same day that an industrial strike was taking place in Mahalla (200 km north of Cairo), a city which is the centre of the Egyptian textile industry. The Egyptian security forces used harsh methods against the strikers and the strike then turned into demonstrations that saw violent acts, in which two people died, dozens were injured and many arrests were made.
The "Facebook youth" called for another strike on the 4th of May, coinciding with Mubarak's 80th birthday. The Muslim Brotherhood wanted to take advantage and join in after they were seduced by the success of the last strike, so did Kifaya; a public opposition movement made up of various political tendencies, lately weakened due to internal quarrels. The strike of 4th May failed and showed the Muslim Brotherhood movement as opportunists when it announced its participation in the strike; but its MPs joined the parliament's sessions instead of boycotting them.
On the one hand there is no public opposition in Egypt that can be described as an organised one. There are no strong political opposition parties, and there is - on the other hand - a ruling regime which is close to dictatorship, in addition to the people who are getting poorer everyday. All these factors lead to the possibility of chaos, a chaos that can start with the revolution of the hungry. The problem is that the fall of a state - especially one with a pivotal role in the region, like Egypt - into chaos will have serious consequences for its neighbours.
No one can predict what will happen in Egypt in the near future and all that I can hope for is that something "better" will be available as a choice...