By MICHAEL SLACKMAN, New York, February 11, 2011
Hosni Mubarak's legacy was supposed to be stability. During almost
three decades in power, he rejected bold action in favor of caution.
He took half-steps at economic liberalization, preserved the peace
with Israel, gave his police force the power to arrest without charge
and allowed only the veneer of democracy to take hold.
But history upended Mr. Mubarak, and his fall came, as suddenly and
surprisingly as his unlikely elevation to the presidency 30 years
ago. Mr. Mubarak's Egypt rose up against him. The streets and squares
filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters day and night until
he could no longer deny the inescapable conclusion that in order to
restore stability, he needed to go.
It was an unexpected epitaph for a military man who until recently
was revered - and reviled - as Egypt's modern-day pharaoh, serving
longer than any contemporary Egyptian leader since Muhammad Ali, the
founder of the modern state.
"He's the accident of history who brilliantly survived as the longest
accidental ruler of Egypt," said Emad Shahin, an Egyptian scholar at
the University of Notre Dame who, like many other Egyptians living
abroad, rushed to Tahrir Square in recent days to share in the moment.
In his final appearance on state television on Thursday, when he
astounded most of his listeners by appearing to say he would remain
in office, he was no longer the stocky, confident military man who
was the only leader most Egyptians had ever really known. At 82, he
was frail and thin, with dyed black hair and a sometimes poignant
undercurrent of self-justification.
The Egyptian public, Egyptian political and military leaders, and
American officials all expected him to say he was handing over power.
But he apparently could not bring himself to say so, clinging to his
vision of himself as a reluctant leader tapped by fate to lead a
nation that could not survive without his guiding hand.
With his authority already belittled by the crowds in the streets,
with the people no longer silenced by the fear his security apparatus
had enforced, his words served only to demonstrate how out of touch
he had become.
"I have given my life serving Egypt and the people," he said,
suggesting it was he who was tired of them, and not the other way
around.
He failed this time using tactics that had so long sustained his
rule: the ability to divide and conquer the masses, to anesthetize
the population with promises, pay raises, subsidies and government
reshuffling. He spoke of preserving his dignity, but that is exactly
what the crowds in the street were fighting for, but for themselves.
During his tenure, Egypt's population doubled to more than 80
million. Life grew harder as the social contract between the state
and citizens broke down. Satellite television and the Internet meant
the state could no longer control what people knew, and so its
narrative was often ignored or even mocked.
The gap between rich and poor became greater, and politics became
less ideological and more about common demands: for freedom,
democracy, social justice, rule of law and economic equality.
Mr. Mubarak's government struggled to prevent people's economic
dissatisfaction from becoming political, but in the end, that failed
too. As he feared, the Egyptian people blamed the entire system.
But perhaps most of all, Mr. Mubarak's concept of stability - one
that was embraced by Washington - in the end proved the ultimate
destabilizer, experts in Egypt said. Facing a police state that
choked off competing ideas and ideologies, preventing free elections
and manipulating the state media, the public found the only way to
achieve its goals was by taking to the streets, occupying the
symbolic heart of the nation, Tahrir Square, and refusing to go home.
Mr. Mubarak leaves office now with the country's future more
uncertain than at any time since assassins killed President Anwar
el-Sadat, elevating Mr. Mubarak to the presidency.
"The idea of integration did not exist in Egypt under Mubarak," said
Amr El-Shobaki, a political analyst at the state-financed Ahram
Center for Political and Strategic Studies, in an interview before
the crisis. "When they see the opposition, they only think, 'How do
we eliminate them?' We have a lot of issues in society, political and
social, and we don't have any legal body to express these demands or
needs. This is our crisis."
The people found a way, organized by social media and old-fashioned
political mobilization, united by anger and hope.
If stability was to be the hallmark of his reign, that very goal
proved to be at least part of his undoing. Stability to many
Egyptians came to mean stagnation, as the economy grew and so did the
number of people living in poverty. Where once the rich, poor and
middle class lived in the same neighborhoods, the wealthy later
retreated to walled compounds of grass yards and swimming pools,
while Mr. Mubarak's government struggled even to keep the streets
clean of trash.
Nearly every step he took in his quest to preserve the status quo
ended up diminishing the standing of the nation as a whole - a blow
to a nation that once saw itself as the center of civilization and
the Arab world, many political analysts and social commentators said.
Egyptians were shocked when their country did not receive even one
vote to host the World Cup soccer tournament in 2000, and then were
shocked again this year when Qatar, the tiny oil-and-gas rich Gulf
nation, succeeded in winning the right to host the event in 2022.
"He used the security forces, every political device, and 'crony
capitalism' to realize his ends, sacrificing the dynamism, autonomy,
and capabilities of Egyptians, particularly young people," said Diane
Singerman, a professor at American University and an expert on
contemporary Egypt.
Mr. Mubarak was not always viewed through such a jaundiced lens. He
was initially seen as the perfect antidote to what ailed his nation.
Mr. Mubarak came to power in 1981, when Mr. Sadat was assassinated by
Islamic radicals in the military. Mr. Mubarak, sitting next to him,
was seared by the experience and from that moment on pledged to
assure security.
He came to power when Egypt was hugely in debt and unsure whether it
could pay its bills. It was still ostracized by its Arab neighbors
for making peace with Israel.
Mr. Mubarak's role was to bring calm, stability and unity to his
nation, and at first, he did. He was a taciturn military officer,
offering a welcome contrast to his two predecessors, charismatic
leaders who marked their place in history for bold if not always
successful ideas. President Gamal Abdel Nasser promoted pan-Arabism,
and Mr. Sadat made peace with Israel, a peace many Egyptians never
fully accepted.
"This guy came to power and he kept the country together," Abdel
Moneim Said, the chairman of Al Ahram Newspaper and Publishing, said
in an interview before the uprising. Mr. Mubarak also presented
himself as a humble leader, tapped by fate to lead his nation. He was
a former athlete, a squash player, a former military man and
commander of the air force who, analysts and peers said, believed
that long hours and hard work were equal to good leadership.
He publicly rejected nepotism, though in later years would maneuver
to have his son succeed him. He publicly shunned corruption, although
Egyptians became convinced that the powerful enriched themselves at
the public's expense.
His early successes were substantial, especially in the realm of
foreign policy. He helped to bring Egypt back into the Arab fold, but
also managed to serve as a strong voice for peace between Arab
nations and Israel. In the mid-1990s, he was instrumental in helping
to forge the agreements with Israel and the P.L.O. that were intended
to foster a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mr. Mubarak oversaw substantial improvements in Egypt's
infrastructure and helped, initially, to reschedule debt and
stabilize the economy. He was also a friend of Washington, which gave
annual military and economic aid of as much as $2 billion. In 1991,
he helped to organize the coalition of Arab armies that agreed to
join the United States in the first Persian Gulf war to push Saddam
Hussein out of Kuwait.
Even during the years when Mr. Mubarak was unhappy with President
George W. Bush for talking about human rights and democracy in Egypt,
he was seen as an ally willing to help with many issues, including
the effort to thwart Iran's growing regional influence and to try to
contain the militant group Hamas, which had seized control of the
Gaza Strip. Egypt was a partner in implementing the widely criticized
policy of rendition, in which terrorism suspects were flown to third
countries for harsh interrogation, even torture.
"He kept close to the United States, but independent of it," said Mr.
Said, who was a member of Mr. Mubarak's ruling National Democratic
Party. On the day before the seminal Jan. 25 protest that ultimately
pushed Mr. Mubarak out of office, Mr. Said said that he thought such
an outcome was out of the question.
But Mr. Mubarak's approach never seemed to change with the times,
experts said, and he ultimately became viewed as an isolated
autocrat, who allowed, or promoted, corruption and cronyism. He
preserved an emergency law that allowed the police to arrest without
cause, restricted the right to assembly, and set up a military court.
The public anger grew, visible to many - but not to the president or
his circle.
"The government does what it wants and they think nobody can do
anything about it," said Fahmy Howeidy, a social commentator,
speaking before the uprising began. "But there is a difference
between people swallowing this and the anger accumulating in the
people. Civil society institutions are in a state of collapse and are
extremely weakened. But the people are there and they are angry."
His political organization, the ruling National Democratic Party, was
less a party than a collection of interests. It grew widely despised,
and during the recent tumult in the street the protesters set its
headquarters on fire.
"If he left in 1993, he would have been a great president for sure,"
said Mr. Shobaki of the Ahram Center. "If he left in the '90s, it's
average. And starting 2000, we start the real decline."
Mr. Mubarak appointed a cabinet to implement economic improvements,
and made some cosmetic political changes. The first three times he
ran for re-election, he ran unopposed, in what were called
referendums. The fourth time, he allowed opposition candidates, but
won with millions of votes and suspicions of electoral manipulation.
The nearest challenger, Ayman Nour, got about 600,000 votes, and was
later jailed on what were widely seen as politically motivated
charges.
During his three decades in power, Mr. Mubarak, his allies and his
party never managed to define an idea for Egyptians to believe in.
"The excesses of free markets without freedoms, the increased
economic inequality in Egypt and crass inattention and suspicion of
the needs and aspirations of the majority of Egyptians, finally rose
up to pierce the monarchical, securitized state that he and his
supporters had built," said Mrs. Singerman, the American University
professor.
During his tenure, Egyptians never lost their well-known sense of
humor and their zest for satire. And it was not long after he took
office that his hallmark, stability, was already mocked not as a
legacy, but as a punch line.
The joke from the late 1980s went like this: Mr. Mubarak's driver
came to a fork in the road. He asked his driver which way President
Nasser went and the response was, "Always left." He asked about
President Sadat and the answer was, "Always right."
"Signal left, then right, and park," Mr. Mubarak told his driver.
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