Who will be Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's heir?
The Middle East loves to swap theories about the succession to Mubarak, who will turn 81 in May.
His 27-year rule can't last forever, although what will happen next is not yet clear. The two men most likely to succeed him are the man to whom he gave life, and the man to whom he owes his own life. They are from different generations, and different schools.
Some think father Hosni will hand power over to his second son, Gamal Mubarak. But others think it will be Omar Suleiman, chief of Egyptian intelligence, who was also in the spotlight last week.
The younger Mubarak was in Washington to meet with congressmen and various think tanks and had been the guest for a half-hour interview on CNN. The chairman of Egypt's ruling party's policy committee, Mubarak acquitted himself fairly well, but that wasn't what captured Egyptians' attention.
What drew the front-page articles and gossip around town was that CNN chose to run throughout the entire interview an identifying line at the bottom of the screen that read: "Gamal Mubarak, expected to be next Egyptian president."
It's generally a no-no in Egypt to be displayed this way, as a successor to the aging leader. Just ask Amr Moussa.
A decade ago, the handsome and popular Egyptian foreign minister had been portrayed in several magazine articles as a good bet to succeed Mubarak, then only 70. But faster than you could say "Who, me?" it was off to the Arab League for Moussa, where he continues to operate in relative obscurity.
Born in 1963, the Mubarak-the-son, a dapper, sports car aficionado who married two years ago, has long sought to carve out a public-policy niche for himself. A business graduate of the American University in Cairo, he worked six years in London as an investment banker for Bank of America. By most accounts it was a lackluster career.
To many Egyptians, the idea of father handing power to son, as took place in Syria in 2000, is repulsive.
"Egypt had a royal family; we don't want to return to that," said Hisham Kassem, founding editor of the independent Almasry Alyoum, Egypt's second largest newspaper.
Mubarak's main competition is Suleiman. He's the tall, slim man in tailored blue suits often seen shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators as they try to negotiate agreements.
And he's President Mubarak's most trusted aide.
In June 1995, it was General Suleiman, who insisted, over the objections of the foreign minister, that Mubarak's armored limousine be flown to Ethiopia for Mubarak to use while on an official visit there. Riding into Addis Ababa from the airport that day, Mubarak, with Suleiman beside him, came under fire from Egyptian assassins. The group's bullets bounced off the car and Mubarak's life was saved.
Returning to Egypt, the two men resolved to deal effectively with the threat posed by the Islamist militants in the Gamaa al-Islamiya group and in Islamic Jihad. Under Suleiman's direction, the country cracked down hard.
Five years later, the normally secretive head of intelligence made his first public appearance at the side of Mubarak as the two men attended the funeral of Syrian leader Hafez Assad and the installation of Assad's son, Bashar. It was a clear message, observers say, of just whom Mubarak values most.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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