If You Were Hosni

Who knew?  President AND a Shriner!

To many Westerners, Hosni Mubarak seems enigmatic, out of touch with reality, perhaps even irrational.  He seems all those things until you put yourself in his shoes.

Try to imagine Hosni Mubarak job hunting and sitting down to write his resume.  Under "job experience" I would suppose he'd write that he served Egypt, in uniform and out, for about 60-years.   In his early years he even flew Spitfires.  Then he got into politics, showed promise and moved on up the ranks.  He lived through every day of what could be called the Middle East modern era.  He served Nasser and Sadat and then did what neither of them could manage, he survived as Egypt's president for three decades.   He survived many assassination attempts and overcame constant challenges, internal as well as external, while enabling his immediate family to amass a fortune estimated at between 40 and 70-billion dollars.  He and Ronald Reagan became presidents in the same year, 1981.

So what sort of skillset does it take to do all that?  Above all else you've got to be a true survivor.  You've got to be nimble, shrewd, calculating, determined, cold, brutal and, when needed, ambiguous even unreadable.

Last night everyone expected Hosni to appear on TV to resign the presidency.  They were shocked, even outraged that he did the opposite.  Why?

If you were Hosni you would realize that it's over for you.   Your days in power are ending.  That can't be changed.   So what's second best?   That's obvious.  What Mubarak needs now is to salvage his National Democratic Party or get it on some sort of life support.  He's said he wants to live out the rest of his life in Egypt but I'm sure he doesn't want to spend those years behind bars.

If the NDP falls as it seems it must, Hosni is going to have to have some sort of amnesty in place first or else get the movers in.  Either way that takes time.  Moving or converting $70-billion in assets isn't something that's easy or quick to accomplish.  Getting family members resettled also takes a bit of time.  Hosni needs understandings with governments throughout Europe, the Middle East and in the United States.  A lot of these things will be far harder to pull off once he yields the presidency.  I'm pretty sure that while Omar is tending the shop, Hosni is working the phones.  He has to buy time and that will only become much harder once he steps down.    In the meantime the old bugger still has a few more cards to play.