Gamal Mubarak's Washington Visit

I haven't posted anything about Gamal Mubarak's Washington visit, but now that it's over, it may be worthy of some comment. The independent press in Egypt has raised questions about the visit, which kept a very low profile. He made an off-the-record appearance at CSIS, had a number of private meetings, and his only real public on-the-record appearance was his interview with Fareed Zakaria of CNN. The video can be seen here, and a written transcript is available here.

As this story in Al-Masry al-Youm indicates (English version here), it's a fairly softball interview. There's a fair amount of talk about Egyptian policies, but absolutely nothing (except in Zakaria's lead-in before Mubarak is onscreen) about Presidential succession. Presumably the reason for ignoring the elephant in the living room was Mubarak's own insistence, but the overall low-key aspect of the visit raises questions about what it was meant to accomplish.

I suspect that part of the answer is it was meant to introduce the younger Mubarak to certain elite elements in government and business, but that it was not meant to be a formal debut as heir apparent. He is, after all, officially only a second-level official of the ruling party, and holds no government position as such. On the other hand, no one is going to treat him as just another party functionary when his real role is increasingly obvious.

On the other hand, if this man is going to be the National Democratic Party's candidate in 2011, he's going to have to drop the pretense at some point. A lot of people were surprised at the last NDP conference that he was not more openly promoted as a future leader. He's still in the wings, and the Washington visit was just subdued enough to continue to keep him there.

You may note that the article in Al-Masry al-Youm quotes Lawrence Pintak, a veteran journalist now heading the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo. That gives me an opportunity to plug the fact that Larry has an article on the role of the Arab media appearing in the spring 2009 issue of The Middle East Journal, about which I'll say more at an appropriate time. It will appear next month.