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Egypt The Road to Power: Recruitment and Composition of the Elite
Within the Egyptian elite, a core elite had even more power
than the broader ministerial elite. The overwhelming dominance of
presidential power in Egypt meant that influence flowed, above all,
from closeness to the president; his confidants, whether they held
high office or not, were usually counted among the core elite.
Under Nasser, these men were fellow military revolutionaries
such as Abdul Hakim Amir, Anwar as Sadat, Kamal ad Din Husayn,
Abdul Latif Baghdadi, Zakariyya Muhi ad Din, and Ali Sabri. Several
prominent civilians, such as press magnate Muhammed Hassanain
Haikal and industry czar Aziz Sidqi, also had influence on the
president and exerted power in their own domains. But the military
clearly dominated the state, and most technocrats were mere
executors of policy. Between the 1952 Revolution and the late Sadat
era, however, there was a continual attrition in the ranks of the
Free Officers; many fell out with Nasser, many were purged by Sadat
during the succession struggle with Ali Sabri, and others retired
thereafter. Of the twenty-six Free Officers politically active in
1970, only eight were absorbed into Sadat's ruling group, whereas
a number of others emerged as leaders of the political opposition
to his regime, notably Khalid Muhi ad Din on the left and Kamal ad
Din Husayn in the nationalist center.
Under Sadat the top elite ceased to be dominated by the
military and was transformed into a much more heterogeneous group.
To be sure, certain old Free Officer colleagues and several top
generals remained in the inner circle. Vice President Mubarak was
a member of the inner core. Among other officers in the top elite,
generals Ahmad Ismail Ali, Abdul Ghani al Gamasi, and Kamal Hassan
Ali played important and extended roles. But civilians far
outnumbered the military. Prime ministers such as Abdul Aziz
Hijazi, Mamduh Salim, and Mustafa Khalil enjoyed real power during
their tenures. Minister of Foreign Affairs Ismail Fahmi was a close
confidant of the president until they fell out over Sadat's trip to
Jerusalem. Interior ministers such as Mamduh Salim and Nabawi
Ismail were key members of the elite in a regime plagued by
constant dissidence. Certain minister-technocrats enjoying
influence over key decisions or sectors belonged to the core elite;
among these were Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul
Munim Qaysuni, long-time Minister of Petroleum Ahmad Izz ad Din
Hilal, and Minister of Power Ahmad Sultan. But it was men such as
Osman Ahmad Osman (also seen as Uthman Ahmad Uthman) and Sayyid
Marii (also seen as Sayyid Marei), representatives of the business
and agrarian bourgeoisies, who seemed to have enjoyed the most
intimate confidence of the president, whether they held top office
or not.
Osman was perhaps the second most powerful man in Sadat's
Egypt. A multimillionaire capitalist, he and his family presided
over a huge business empire spanning the public and private
sectors. He held office for a time, as minister of reconstruction,
but his relatives were in and out of a multitude of public offices.
Through the marriage of a son to one of Sadat's daughters, he was
virtually incorporated into the president's family and appeared to
use his influence to favor business in general as well as his own
fortunes. Another influential member of Sadat's "family" by
marriage was Sayyid Marii, a technocrat from a landowning family.
He had presided over Nasser's agrarian reform, but in the 1970s he
helped steer Sadat toward both political and economic
liberalization. He ran the official party and the parliament on
Sadat's behalf for extended periods and was a force behind the
multiparty initiative.
Mubarak tried to distance himself from these core Sadatists,
and many were pushed from the center of power. Mubarak's inner core
was headed by two advisers in the presidency with diplomatic
service backgrounds. Usamah al Baz, a former diplomat who directed
the president's Office for Political Affairs and was reputedly a
closet Nasserite, or supporter of Arab socialism, seemed to enjoy
political influence with the president; Mustafa Faqi was another
close adviser. Ismat Abdul Majid's extended tenure as minister of
foreign affairs indicated that he had the trust of the president
and gave him considerable influence in the foreign policy
bureaucracy. Yusuf Wali, a former agricultural bureaucrat, headed
the ruling party and was Mubarak's chief political troubleshooter.
After the dismissal of Kamal Hassan Ali, a general of
conservative proclivities who had served Sadat, Mubarak's prime
ministers were technocrats trained in economics and lacking
personal political bases. Ali Lutfi was a long-time minister of
finance and Atif Sidqi was a top state auditor. Mubarak generally
upgraded the role of technocrats in his inner circle at the expense
of the "wheeler-dealer" politicians of the Sadat era. On the one
hand, Atif Ubayd, an American-backed minister of cabinet affairs,
was thought to be prime ministerial material but was passed over;
on the other hand, officials who served Nasser but were pushed out
by Sadat made a certain comeback. Still, the infitah
bourgeoisie who supported and benefited from Sadat's rule remained
powerful in the Mubarak regime, particularly entrenched in the
interstices of state and business. One sign of their continued
power was their ability to block attempts to legalize a Nasserist
party. The continuing coercive base of the state was reflected in
three major figures close to the center of power. Field Marshal
Abdul Halim Abu Ghazala was long reputed to be the number-two man
in the regime and was said to have been offered the vice presidency
in acknowledgment of the fact. The hardline face of the regime was
presented by tough and disliked ministers of interior, notably
Hassan Abu Basha and Zaki Badr, whose campaigns against the
opposition contained elements of dissent yet drew the heat away
from the president. Mubarak's ability to dismiss both top army and
police generals indicated the consolidation of his control over the
elite.
Because the command posts of the bureaucracy were levers of
power and patronage in Egypt, the cabinet as a whole could be taken
as the second rank of the top elite, just below the core around the
president. Recruitment into the cabinet remained the main road into
the elite, and arrival there was either an opportunity to build
power or a confirmation of seniority and influence in the
bureaucracy or military. Moreover, the formation of the cabinet was
a key opportunity for coopting into the regime important
personalities and interests from outside the state apparatus.
The change in the composition of cabinets from the Nasser era
to the post-Nasser period indicated a shift in the paths to power.
Under Nasser, the military, and particularly members of the Free
Officers, constituted a privileged recruitment pool from which
strategic ministries were filled, although apolitical technocrats
recruited from the bureaucracy and the universities also filled a
significant proportion of ministerial posts. Under Sadat and
Mubarak, the military declined as a main recruitment channel into
the cabinet; whereas the military supplied one-third of the
ministerial elite and filled 40 percent of ministerial positions
under Nasser, in Sadat's post-1973 "infitah governments,"
military representation dropped to about 10 percent, and it
remained limited under Mubarak. It was still possible for prominent
officers to attain high political office. The minister of defense
position, a preserve of a senior general, remained one of the most
powerful posts in the regime and could be a springboard to wider
political power. General Kamal Hassan Ali moved from minister of
defense to minister of foreign affairs and finally to prime
minister under Sadat and Mubarak. Perhaps the single most important
ladder to power under Sadat was the combination of an engineering
degree with a career in the bureaucracy and public sector. Persons
with such backgrounds, making up around one-fourth of Sadat's
ministers after the initiation of infitah, seemed to be the
chief beneficiaries of the decline of military dominance in
politics. The relative eclipse of the army was also paralleled by
the rise of professional police officers into the top elite. One,
Mamduh Salim, became prime minister, and others wielded great power
as ministers of interior and ministers of local government.
Academia was an important channel of recruitment in all three
regimes. Professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, and,
increasingly, private business people became eligible for
recruitment by service in party and parliamentary politics and made
up about one-fourth of the ministerial elite in the late Sadat era.
Although the roads to power diversified after Nasser, access by
middle class military officers probably narrowed from his era of
rule to the post-Nasser Egypt, which upper- and upper-middle class
personalities dominated.
Data as of December 1990
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