Mubarak: Trial and error

Sunday, former Egyptian President Mubarak and his sons Ala’a and Gamal were back in court which was just as chaotic as the previous session.

There’s something unseemly about the sight of the elderly former president of the largest country in the Arab world on a hospital trolley within a courtroom cage with an intravenous needle protruding from his hand. I felt exactly the same way when I saw the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein looking disheveled after being dragged out of his bolthole by American occupying forces prior to being jailed and tried by a kangaroo court that sent him to the gallows.

I feel such humiliating treatment denigrates not only the man but more importantly the office—and by extension the country itself. It’s the other extreme in the West where heads of state invariably get away with criminality. President Nixon was known to be embroiled in the Watergate scandal; yet he was allowed to walk away with a pardon from President Ford. President Reagan was given a free pass for the shameful Iran-Contra Affair.

Likewise, it’s inconceivable that George W. Bush and his British sidekick, Tony Blair, who took their nations to war on a pack of lies and are responsible for the death of up to a million Iraqis and Afghans will ever have to explain themselves before a judge. It’s curious that while Arab citizens call for retribution against leaders who failed them, Western publics are generally mute.

It seems to me, that the best way forward would be for all countries to take a leaf out of post-apartheid South Africa’s book with Truth and Reconciliation commissions. In this way, members of toppled leaderships who have committed crimes would have a forum to admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness. This would allow the healing of old wounds without any stench of revenge and permit a nation to put the ugly past behind it and move on.

Mubarak is a product of a different era and so was Saddam; both were warriors and considered their roles to be dictatorial and paternalistic. Their mistakes have similarities. They began their careers as men of the people and later distanced themselves from the street while allowing their egos to get the better of them. They awarded top government jobs to family members and cronies who were mostly motivated by greed and the will to power.

Little by little, they began to perceive their countries as their own possessions. Instead of listening to those they were supposed to serve, they aimed to control them with fear and oppression in the belief the people existed to serve them.

In Saddam’s case, his conviction was a foregone conclusion; I fear that Mubarak’s may be the same. I do not want to cast aspersions on the chief trial judge, Ahmed Refaat, as to his integrity but the man is in an invidious position as long as the vast majority of Egyptians are baying for Mubarak’s blood.

In the event the evidence against the former president to support the charges of corruption and the unlawful killing of protestors doesn’t hold up and Mubarak walks free, all hell will break loose. Judge Refaat is highly respected for his legal acumen and fair-mindedness but he is under intense pressure and must realize that any decision in Mubarak’s favor could ignite violence or even turn the people against the caretaker government and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The question is will the judge hold to the strict letter of the law when what is at stake is Egypt’s security and economic stability?

I have no idea who ordered security forces to shoot at demonstrators using live bullets, the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who is expected to attend court as a witness, could pronounce on that. Former intelligence chief and Vice President Omar Suleiman, who threatened revolutionaries accusing them of pursuing foreign agendas, may also know the answer but, strangely, he’s faded from the picture. Right now, the accused are all laying the blame on each other.

There’s little doubt, however, that the charges of corruption will stick due to Mubarak’s massive wealth and extensive worldwide assets that could not have been accrued on his comparatively paltry salary. Moreover, Egypt is inherently a rich country; it has oil and gas, the lucrative Suez Canal, a large manufacturing industry, agriculture and unique attractions for foreign tourists.

The fact that approximately half of the population lives below the poverty line and almost a quarter are illiterate speaks volumes for the failures of the former regime. Surely Mubarak’s biggest crime was to preside over a booming economy while allowing the gap between the haves and haves-not to unacceptably widen.

For instance, while many Egyptians, especially in rural areas, don’t have clean water or decent housing, his government was selling vast tracts of prime land to developers at ridiculously cheap prices so they could construct gated villa communities with golf courses. They also sold off many state industries to the private sector and gas to Israel at less than the cost of production.

The chasm between rich and poor is evident in Alexandria where I live. The affluent spend their summers in million dollar villas on the northern coast, shop for imported foodstuffs at Carrefour and frequent Alexandria’s mushrooming trendy cafes and restaurants, while poorer families can only watch others enjoying extravagant lifestyles from low walls and benches along the Corniche where they gather en masse to socialize each evening and munch on corn-on-the-cob.

Another of Mubarak’s greatest errors was to abandon the Palestinians by shutting the Rafah Crossing to Gaza on Israel’s say-so and becoming what some describe as a tool for US foreign policy in the region. There is little sympathy among Arabs for Mubarak’s plight but, according to Israel’s former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer—who has referred to Egypt’s former president as “a patriot”—the Jewish state offered Mubarak political asylum. Ben-Eliezer admits to being a close friend of Mubarak and says his trial has caused his sadness and pain. I think that says it all.

Whatever Mubarak’s fate will be, he’s brought it upon himself. Following his resignation, there was a large window through which he could have walked through to seek a comfortable exile in a friendly country in the way that Tunisia’s Ben-Ali did. Only he knows why he chose to stay and face the music. Did he believe in his own innocence? Did he trust in the military to protect him? Did he hope to move back into his palaces one day? Unless he decides to pen an honest memoir, we’ll probably never know.

Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.