Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

Mubarak Is President, but not for Long

President Mubarak – confident (having vote rigging down to a fine art) that he will be Egypt’s president for life - has gone to great lengths to proudly retain power in his country that is now considered ‘a failed nation’ like Haiti and Sudan.

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President Mubarak – confident (having vote rigging down to a fine art) that he will be Egypt’s president for life - has gone to great lengths to proudly retain power in his country that is now considered ‘a failed nation’ like Haiti and Sudan. He talks freely about being the president of a vibrant democracy, glorying in his self depiction as a strong, fair military ruler – despite it being correctly predicted that he would rig the elections and achieve a landslide victory - while the US and countless human rights organizations and individuals have described Mubarak’s 2010 parliamentary elections as violent and full of fraud.
Despite his efforts, will Mubarak be a real contender in the 2011 elections? The Arab world’s most populous country, which also happens to be the US’s favorite dictatorship, has a new possible contender in next year’s presidential elections.

President Mubarak, now 82 years old, has recently recovered from gall-bladder surgery, and has not named a successor. He has never appointed a vice president and the presumed candidates in line to succeed him are either his younger son Gamal or Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief.
Dr. El-Baradei has now joined forces with the Muslim Brotherhood and with a confident show of unity has announced the possibility that he will run for president in the 2011 presidential elections. 

Since returning to Egypt recently, El-Baradei has made some strong statements concerning Egypt and the elections, saying that the army has the right to vote in the elections and the constitution has rendered the Egyptian people as poor slaves.
 
He has also voiced the need for unity among the political opposition and the need to boycott the presidential elections if certain changes are not made. In a warning statement El-Baradei addressed businessmen who benefit from the regime, reminding them that the regime will not rule indefinitely and that they should not be part of the process of destroying Egypt, noting that there is nothing wrong with making profit but this should be done in a nation that enjoys social justice. 

It does not look likely that ‘social justice’ is anywhere near the top of President Mubarak’s agenda for the coming year til the presidential elections, so we will have to see what the Egyptian people prefer – someone who goes out on a limb to decry oppression and rally people to achieve justice and development, or an elderly autocratic ruler who disrespects his own people and scorns his allies.