CAIRO, 16 June 2005 — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he would name a vice president after the September presidential election for the first time in his 24-year rule. Soliman Awad, the presidential spokesman, said Mubarak is keen on carrying out this plan and this is an indication of Mubarak’s intention for true political reforms.
Egyptian expert Muhammad Al-Sayyed Said of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies said the recent announcement is an indication that Mubarak will run for a new term in office. “It also shows that Mubarak plans for the succession after his new terms ends,” he told Arab News.
The president’s son, Gamal Mubarak, denied all rumors that he will succeed his father in office. “I am absolutely clear in my mind and the president’s mind that this story of father and son has nothing to do with reality,” he told British journalists.
“There are much more important things that we are discussing.” He said the question of dynastic succession should finally be “put to bed” by his father’s decision to open up this year’s presidential elections to opposition candidates. The upper house of the Egyptian Parliament, the Shoura Council, approved the draft law regulating the country’s first multi-candidate presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities yesterday released 37 members of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, detained after the group organized protests calling for political reform in May, a judicial source said.
On Tuesday, the authorities released 137 members of the Islamist group, which the government refuses to recognize but which is widely believed to be the country’s largest opposition organization.
“The 37 released had been detained after demonstrations in Cairo,” the source said, without saying why they were released.
Police arrested hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members during and after the protests last month.
