CAIRO, 30 September 2005 — President Hosni Mubarak’s younger son Gamal further stamped his authority on Egypt at the ruling party’s conference yesterday, declaring his camp’s victory over the old guard.
In a keynote speech to members of the National Democratic Party (NDP), the 41-year-old Gamal Mubarak took much of the credit for his father’s Sept. 7 election landslide and set the tone for the November parliamentary polls.
“During the presidential election, the party proved its ability to modernize, proved the worth of the ideas it is has been promoting since the party took a new orientation in 2002,” he said.
In 2002, Gamal stepped out of his father’s shadow to take the helm of the NDP’s influential policies secretariat and has since led the party’s reformist camp, methodically sidelining the regime’s old guard.
“At the 2002 conference, there was a moment of honest realization. The party understood that change was inevitable, that changes in society had not been mirrored by changes in our party,” he explained.
The conference had been billed as a watershed in the party, with Gamal Mubarak gaining new prominence after masterminding his father’s campaign.
“The conference will not only consolidate the position of reformers within the party, but will see them emerge victorious,” the state-owned Al-Ahram Weekly said yesterday.
His heightened profile in Egyptian political life has also fueled speculation that he was being groomed for succession, a scenario that provoked virulent criticism from the opposition.
During the president’s swearing-in ceremony in parliament Tuesday, opposition leader Ayman Nour had planned to interrupt Mubarak as he took the oath to say Gamal should be taking it.
“I didn’t do it because I had security officers sitting around me in parliament. But while Mubarak was taking the oath, the man who really runs this country was watching from the balcony,” he told AFP.
In his speech, Gamal Mubarak also outlined his party’s program and warned that the upcoming legislative elections would be a key test.
“The parliamentary election places the party before an important test,” Gamal told thousands of delegates at the conference.
“The political reforms we have adopted will be judged during these parliamentary elections,” which are due to kick off on Nov. 8, he said.
Gamal Mubarak added that despite the many “problems and challenges” ahead, “we approach (the elections) with confidence in our vision,” saying “we will enter the election with an ambitious party program.”
The 77-year-old president focused his campaign on promises to create millions of jobs and raise wages, pledges that were deemed unrealistic by many opposition candidates and commentators.
But Gamal referred to them as a “program that translates hopes into a living reality.”
The conference should also witness intense jockeying as the list of candidates for the parliamentary polls is expected to be drafted and the party’s heavyweights vie for jobs in the next reshuffled Cabinet.
President Mubarak is to give an address today in which he is expected “to underline that the next phase will draw on the resources and talents of a younger generation,” Al-Ahram Weekly said.
One of the signs that the young guard is preparing to ruffle some feathers came when Investment Minister Mahmud Mohieddin — a close Gamal ally — told the delegates that new measures would be taken to fight corruption.
“Corruption in the administration should be tackled,” he said during a press conference.
“We have a full program to that purpose but one of the ways to combat it would be to increase the role of the media by opening radio and television to the public sector,” he said.
