In the absence of a Vice President, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif has been Egypt's acting President in the absence of Husni Mubarak in Germany. Here's a piece in The National noting that Nazif is getting low marks for his leadership during the absence.
No surprise there. Under Egypt's strong Presidential system (which gives the President roughly the powers exercised by, say, Ramses II, and the Prime Minister little authority at all), the Prime Minister is just the top bureaucrat/technocrat. The notion that, as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, he can tell the Minister of Defense or Minister of the Interior what to do, would generate guffaws from most Egyptians, probably including Nazif himself. If critics are criticizing him for not saying enough about the death of the Sheikh al-Azhar, which is mentioned in the article, it's doubtless because he hasn't yet been told what he thinks on the matter. The next Sheikh al-Azhar will be chosen by Husni Mubarak or someone else in the senior elite, not Nazif.
While I'm on Egypt, though I've been cribbing a lot from The Arabist lately, he has posted a video essay on the Mubarak years which, while clearly partisan, has a lot of interesting historical video, and since he has posted embed codes, I'll pass it on:
Friday, March 19, 2010
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