Heikal on the Presidency of Egypt

Someday I'm going to do a big, cathartic post on Mohammed Hassanein Heikal. I've never met the man (though, oddly enough, I've met his brother), and he is always described as a confidant of Nasser, which he was or, in my personal theory, was led to believe he was. (Though he was presumably the ghost writer of The Philosophy of the Revolution, I think Nasser gave him only the information — or disinformation — he wanted him to see, and sometimes made stuff up.) I've known many people who were in meetings with Nasser, Sadat, etc., personally, who profoundly dispute Heikal's version of events, which are usually second hand. My anecdotes go back to John Badeau, Ambassador to Egypt under JFK, and come down to relatively recent times. But that's a diatribe for another day.

The point is, Heikal has become a darling of Gulf media, and has been revealing online over the past few years many documents that Egypt thinks the state, and not Heikal, ought to own. At 86 years old, Heikal is not necessarily at the peak of his powers. But his 15 minutes of fame is approaching half a century.

Anyway, until I have time to write more on Heikal, I must at least note his recent outpourings on the Egyptian Presidency. In an interview with Al-Masry al-Youm, he rejected Gamal Mubarak as a candidate for the Presidency and instead suggested creation of a council of state to write a new constiution. It would include key Egyptians such as ‘Amr Moussa, &Omar Suleiman, and Muhammad ElBaradei, because they would not themselves be seeking office. (In other words, he just wrote off the alternative candidates as well.) It's prompted a fair amount of debate and commetary.

The interview was in two parts, for those who read Arabic. Here's Part One and here's Part Two. And the Al-Masry al-Youm website has lots of commentary on the subject: see these search results. For those who don't read Arabic, this account in Haaretz summarizes the story. Al-Masry al-Youm's English language website does not seem to have posted anything.

Clearly Heikal is, on the one hand, making a proposal that has little chance of actually occurring, but on the other, rejecting Gamal and seeking to co-opt the other potential candidates by kicking them upstairs to a council of state. Even at 86, he still fancies himself a player in Egyptian politifcs: not as a candidate of course, but as a Kingmaker.

Since Heikal still enjoys a high reputation in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world (despite my reservations noted above), I thought I should at least take note of this story.