Why Egypt's power has dimmed

Most Egyptians did not bother to vote in last month's poll and many greeted the results with apathy and ingrained cynicism, not street protests. Stop people in the streets of Alexandria, Egypt's second city, and they readily share their frustrations.
"Elections mean nothing in Alexandria or in Egypt," complained Mohamed Abdel Fattah, a 68-year-old carpenter.
"People are sick of politics. Each candidate is dirtier than the last, they buy votes with money -- it's one big mafia."
Zinhar Rushdi, 52, an insurance employee in a suit, said MPs routinely ignore their constituents once they have secured the "personal gains and perks" that accrue from an assembly seat. "It's a patronage system," he explained, his soft voice almost drowned by the din of traffic. "Businessmen get immunity so they have cover to pursue everything they want."
Is there any hope of change? President Hosni Mubarak's plans are uncertain. He has had health scares and is the second-oldest Arab leader after Saudi Arabia's ailing King Abdullah. If he runs in next year's presidential election, he will win. If he steps aside or fails to last his term, no one can be sure who will take over.
Despite official denials, many Egyptians believe Mubarak has groomed his businessman-politician son Gamal for the job, but few relish the notion of a dynastic handover in a republic.
"Mubarak's ideal of a strong but fair leader would seem to discount Gamal Mubarak to some degree, given Gamal's lack of military experience, and may explain Mubarak's hands-off approach to the succession question," mused U.S. ambassador Margaret Scobey in another leaked diplomatic cable. "Indeed, he seems to be trusting to God and the ubiquitous military and civilian security services to ensure an orderly transition," she wrote.
Lobna Mahmoud's grey Mercedes purrs past a security gate into the sudden calm of Palm Hills, where gardeners tend grassy terraces, sprinklers hiss over flower beds and birds sing. The villa she bought five years ago -- prices have tripled since -- is nearly complete, with its marble floors and pitched tile roof. It looks over a sprawling club with floodlit football pitch, tennis courts, Olympic-sized pool, cafes and restaurants.
"When I saw this place, it was like a dream," says Mahmoud, 45, a businesswoman who imports chemicals for paint factories. It may be only 30 km (19 miles) from downtown Cairo, but Palm Hills and many similar projects now ringing the city are a world away from the capital's relentless smog, grime and noise.
For most Egyptians, they might as well be on another planet.
In the gritty railway town of Dalgamoun, in the Nile Delta north of Cairo, black motor rickshaws jostle past plodding buffaloes in the mostly unpaved streets -- a place where small factories and workshops coexist with slower rural rhythms. "Prices are rising like fire and I can't keep up, with the money I make and the big family I have," says 67-year-old Ali Abu Issa, serving tea in a truck-stop cafe on the outskirts of town. A grizzled ex-soldier who fought in Yemen and in the 1967 and 1973 wars against Israel, he has eight children.
"I call out to Mubarak to help us," he says, asserting that the president has a self-interested entourage which keeps him in the dark about the plight of the people. "Officials are corrupt and greedy. They take everything and leave us only scraps."
Rich-poor contrasts in Egypt seem
starker than ever, but the government denies that only a privileged few have benefited from economic reform. Wealth is trickling down, insists Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali. "The quality of life of the average Egyptian has improved significantly, despite what you hear in the street."
Egypt could have done even better, he told Reuters, if reforms were not obstructed by bureaucracy and "people who don't believe foreigners should invest or buy land here -- as if they were going to put it on their backs and walk off with it".
Magdy Rady, the cabinet spokesman, acknowledged that Egypt has lagged Turkey in attracting foreign direct investment in the past six years. Government figures show Egypt lured a total of $45 billion against Turkey's $81 billion in that period.
"The best we achieved was $13 billion," Rady says, adding that Turkey, which hit a high of $22 billion in 2007, had been spurred on by its ambitions to join the European Union.
Egypt can hardly aspire to EU membership, but, with no transition to more dynamic leadership in sight, hosting the Arab world's first World Cup might have been just the kind of project to galvanise the nation. With Qatar having grabbed those bragging rights, the football-crazy customers in Mr Bayoumy's tea-shop have a despondent analysis.
"Egypt's role is retreating in the region," said Magdy Saroh, a 43-year-old engineer, "because Egypt has stood still for 30 years while younger, energetic countries like Qatar that were not on the map have sprung up and are speeding ahead."
(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad, Edmund Blair, Yasmine Saleh, Patrick Werr and Dina Zayed in Cairo, Ibon Villelabeitia in Ankara and Martina Fuchs in Dubai; Editing by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith)
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