What will happen, when?

Long before the 2011 presidential elections an early speculative game is already in full swing. What's all the fuss about, wonders Dina Ezzat

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Atef Ahmed is a taxi driver who works "no less than 10 hours a day" in Cairo's busy, often nerve wracking streets. He can, he says, make triple the amount he used to be paid in his civil servant's job from driving his taxi. His increased income as a taxi driver has allowed him to get married and live "decently, if not comfortably".

Ahmed has little interest in the debate currently transfixing Egypt's commentariat. What happens in 2011, when President Hosni Mubarak's fifth six-year term as president comes to an end, is way down his list of concerns. Ahmed claims not even to be aware that presidential elections were scheduled for 2011.

"It was only when I was watching TV a few days ago that I heard about it. There was some speculation about who will run, something of that sort," he says.

Nor is he particularly keen to talk about the subject. By 2011, he hopes to be done with the instalments he pays for his taxi. And then he might be able to take his family on holiday for a week during the summer, something they have never been able to afford.

Ahmed inserts a Quranic tape into his player. The message is clear. It is time to shut up.

The columnists, bloggers and activists who daily air their views in the press, on Facebook and across the Internet, might well be shocked by Ahmed's lack of interest in what for them is an abiding passion.

The latest contribution to the ongoing what-will- happen-when debate has come from Egypt's most senior political commentator, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal. Interviewed by Al-Jazeera Heikal posed questions about Egypt's political future and how this might impact on a regional role which, as many other commentators have noted, can hardly be said to be passing through its most impressive phase. A few days later, in an interview with the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom, Heikal elaborated on the same topic, the political future of Egypt.

Noting that President Mubarak, like himself, would be in his mid-80s by 2011, Heikal suggested a council of trustees be established, ready to fill any political vacuum that might occur. Not that Heikal advocated this council of grandees should itself exercise rule. Rather, its job would be to pave the way for truly democratic elections to take place.

The new, independent daily Al-Shorouk, was not slow to join the bandwagon. It interviewed Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, Egypt's popular foreign minister in the 1990s, who for the first time acknowledged calls from opposition quarters and bloggers that he should put himself forward as a candidate in the next presidential elections. Moussa did not say that he would run, but neither did he exclude the option.

A similar position has been taken by Mohamed El-Baradei, whose mandate as director of the International Atomic Energy Agency expires in a few weeks, towards calls from political activists and commentators, in the press and on the Internet, that he should stand.

The purpose of citing such names, say those who are more than happy to do so, is simple: they want a serious and credible alternative to Gamal Mubarak, the younger son of the president, from running as the NDP's candidate to what opposition figures insist will be an easy victory for him in 2011.

Neither Gamal Mubarak nor the president has commented on the fevered speculation.

However, on Wednesday, two days before the NDP's annual conference scheduled tomorrow, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif told Reuters that "it is too early" for President Mubarak to decide whether or not he will run for president in 2011. Mubarak, Nazif said, is "in good health" but still "it is unfair" to ask him to make a decision on the next presidential elections two years in advance.

Gamal Mubarak, Nazif said, is a potential NDP candidate for the 2011 presidential elections.

Meanwhile, other leading NDP figures, together with pro-regime commentators, prefer to dismiss the debate as artificial, pointing out what everyone must surely know, that the presidential elections are still two years away. Even so they take pains to dismiss the proposed candidates as unqualified, drawing attention to the fact that they do not meet the conditions that the constitution demands from anyone intending to stand for the post.

Under Article 76 of the constitution -- amended by the NDP in the face of wide opposition in 2005 -- any candidate seeking to run in a presidential election must secure either the direct and considerable support of legislative and local councils, which are in any case dominated by the NDP and likely to remain so, or have been a member, for at least a year, of the higher board of a political party that controls at least three per cent of People's Assembly seats.

None of the proposed candidates meet, or are likely to meet, such requirements, either because they are not members of political parties or because the parties that have offered them seats on their higher boards are unlikely -- given the parties' own histories and that of security intervention -- to end up with three per cent of the seats in the next parliament.

"I don't think that this debate matters at all," says Sameh, a young Cairene lawyer. "The next president is either Mubarak or his son. They will let people talk and scream but ultimately they will do what they want to do."

Sameh, 24, has only ever known one president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. He loses little sleep over who is ruling Egypt, let alone who might in two years time. "Do you think we have any say in it?" he asks.

"Yes, we have a say," insists Amira, newly graduated from Cairo University. "If we choose to have a say and make our voices heard we will bring about change. The problem is that not enough people care."

On Saturday, President Mubarak will address the NDP's annual conference -- a speech that many political commentators are hoping will offer some clues to his own plans, post 2011. Such hopes, say NDP insiders, are probably misplaced.