Mubarak Leading the Pack (Not!)

The desperation of the Egyptian tyrant.

Egypt's regime is desperate. The president - Hosni Mubarak - is widely loathed. In power for nearly 30 years, the authoritarian leader has stated that he will remain president until his last breath - the Egyptian people be damned. So despised is Mubarak that only 5% of the Egyptian voting public bothered to show up for a plebiscite held a few years ago.

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Mubarak is aging and is believed to be in very poor health and may not last much longer. Elections are next year. And notwithstanding the pleas of the ruling party that Mubarak stand for yet another term, the ruling party and Mubarak himself are now seeking to position the president's son - Gamal Mubarak - as his successor. Needless to say, the Egyptian people have little patience for nepotism, especially from a regime so detested.

But Gamal Mubarak is - like his father - determined to reign, the public be damned. Posters promoting his candidacy have been placed around the capital, ostensibly by an independent committee that is so enamored with Gamal and which Gamal and his entourage have nothing to do with. And the Mini-Mubarak has been holding America-style town hall forums with vetted guests and vetted questions.

With the election next year, the Egyptian state media is working over time to promote the Mubarak clique and demean the opposition. It recently resorted to the act of infiltrating the Facebook page of opposition leader Mohamed El-Baradi's daughter and posting photos of her in a bikini and reporting that she classifies her religion as "agnostic".

But beyond smearing the opposition with petty attacks, it also seeks to promote the image of a strong Mubarak leadership and with the silly goal that if Egyptians see their president as a strong leader they'll conclude 'well, unfortunately he is now too sick to go on much longer, but, hey, we can settle for his son'. The promotion of Mubarak is more for the son than the father. Egyptians, of course, do not fall for such transparent and cheap propaganda, but never underestimate the depths of low and lower the state media will resort.

As in this case of an altered photo made to make it appear as if Mubarak is leading President Obama and the Palestinian and Israeli, and Jordanian leadership at the recent White House Mideast "peace" summit; to make it appear as if Mubarak - visionary that he is - is a leading world figure who walks in front of the American president, no less, and - in effect - leads the world. This stupid image was published by al-Ahram newspaper with the hoping of creating a false image which they hope will spill into support for Mini-Mubarak:

The real photo:

The propaganda forgery:

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H/T: Angry Arab.