YAHOO! NEWS: NEW YORK – Egypt President Hosni Mubarak's family dynasty—from his wife Suzanne, who pals around with Carla Bruni, to his son who disappeared—has no shortage of drama, Karen Leigh reports. Plus, view photos.
The dictator’s wife is not who you’d expect.
Suzanne Mubarak —who reportedly fled to London from Cairo this week as husband Hosni, the country’s embattled president, struggled to keep his government from toppling in the midst of violent protests—is a half-Welsh heiress who loves fur, hangs with French First Lady Carla Bruni and sits on the board of the Arabian version of Sesame Street.For decades she has been the silent, tweed-wearing force behind a Mubarak dynasty that began with Hosni’s 1981 swearing in and looked likely to continue with high-flying ex-banker son Gamal, until public backlash came to a fiery head last week.
"The majority of Egyptians over the last 15 years have grown very familiar with the family—they’re highly visible. Mubarak tried to present them as a dignified family in eyes of Egyptians—that they are to be loved and respected,” said Adel Iskandar, professor of Arab media at Georgetown University.
It’s a bit Beaver Cleaver—“that he's the father of the nation, the wife a maternal figure who embraces women and children—all of this an attempt to present her as someone very warm and nurturing."
But in December, a WikiLeaks cable from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo attested to an almost Manchurian hold on her son—“her power and influence, many argue, are keys to Gamal's viability,” it said. “Sources tell us that she has kept Mubarak pere from naming a Vice President.” (Mubarak appointed a vice president on Saturday.)
Gamal became a known entity once he was appointed to the National Democratic Party.
According to Iskandar, “he suddenly became a major figure without the credentials.”
Over the last half-decade, the public has grown increasingly weary of how Mubarak’s younger son has been presented—front-page newspaper coverage, sponsorship of youth empowerment initiatives—almost overnight and without media criticism.
“It became very clear in the last five years that he was being groomed to be a major figure politically in his own right—not just the son of the president. In that capacity he was very distant from [everyday] Egyptians,” he said. “And he became very ceremonial, traveling to D.C. to meet with state leaders. The Egyptian public was like, ‘who is this guy? This all happened behind our backs.’”
(Egyptians are adamantly opposed to hereditary rule, and have been since the 1952 coup that overthrew King Farouk.) “Gamal's image was suddenly being looked at under a microscope,” Iskandar said. “He looked like an impending reality." >>> Karen Leigh | Saturday, January 29, 2011
WIKI: Suzanne Mubarak >>>
The mother-in-law of President Mubarak of Egypt grew up in Pontypridd. Lily May Palmer, daughter of colliery manager Charles Henry Palmer, married Saleh Sabet [also Thabet] and had a daughter Suzanne, who was born in the province of Menya (Upper Egypt) and later married Mubarak. [Source: BBC]
