You Are Under Arrest for Masterminding the Egyptian Revolution: A Memoir by Ahmed Salah & Alex Mayyasi

Author:Ahmed Salah & Alex Mayyasi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Spark Publications
Published: 2016-04-03T22:00:00+00:00

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* The Brotherhood’s success in Egypt’s 2011-2012 elections represented a lack of non-corrupt alternatives rather than support for its platform, as can be seen from the quick decline in its popularity once Brotherhood leaders assumed office. The number of Muslim Brothers comes from “Mohamed Habib: The Brotherhood is Still Led By the Supreme Guide: Badie.” MBC. December 17, 2014.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

NOW OR NEVER

(JANUARY 2010 – DECEMBER 2010)

Before Ahmed Ezz became Egypt’s “Steel King” and the country’s most reviled businessman, he played the drums in an eighties rock band called Tiba. As my friends complained that men like Ezz had ruined the country, we joked that he still clapped like a drummer. Whether he was sitting in parliament or speaking on the news, he clapped with the concise, rhythmic motions he once used while playing a hand drum.

I spoke fervently at events like the dinner with Michael Posner because I believed that we had to end the Mubarak regime within two years. Egypt would hold parliamentary elections in late 2010 and a presidential election in 2011, which most of the country expected Mubarak’s son Gamal to win. Hosni Mubarak was eighty-three years old. Since he would choose the next presidential nominee of the National Democratic Party, he could anoint his son before an election took place.1 Gamal claimed he would not pursue the presidency. But President Nasser had started a tradition of Egyptian leaders acting as if they reluctantly pursued power only when urged on by the people, and Mubarak was clearly grooming his son. Gamal appeared in public with his father and announced government reforms as the NDP’s deputy secretary-general and head of its Policies Committee.

As former military officers had ruled Egypt since 1952, many Egyptians suspected that the military objected to Gamal succeeding his father. The prevalence of men like Ahmed Ezz, however, convinced us that Gamal Mubarak could survive a power struggle.

Ezz was born into modest wealth. He studied civil engineering at Cairo University, lived in Europe for a time, and joined his family’s construction materials business as a young man. By 2010, Ezz’s company controlled nearly two thirds of Egypt’s steel market and his personal share of Ezz Steel was valued near $2 billion.2 The rise of Ezz Steel coincided with Ahmed Ezz’s friendship with Gamal Mubarak—a friendship that also helped Ezz in politics. Ezz became a member of parliament and married Shahinaz El-Nagger, the young woman who used her inherited fortune to buy the parliament seat that my friend Magdy Hussein failed to win. She became Ezz’s third wife.

Men like Ahmed Ezz represented a powerful new inner circle whose relationships with Gamal Mubarak augmented their political and personal fortunes. As Gamal assumed a larger role in the National Democratic Party, he pulled loyalists like Ezz into greater political prominence. Gamal Mubarak’s role as a pro-business reformer in Egypt’s “government of businessmen,” which focused on privatizing state-owned businesses, allowed him to enrich his circle and himself through a process that resembled the looting of Russia’s state-owned assets after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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