An engineer. An expert in irrigation. The head of Water Resources at the African Development Bank. Awarded the Order of Republic, Second Class, in 1995.
This is exactly the kind of Curriculum Vitae one could easily imagine among the papers on the desk of deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, if Mubarak had been about to choose a new head for one of his governments.
An engineer. An expert in irrigation. The head of Water Resources at the African Development Bank. Awarded the Order of Republic, Second Class, in 1995.
This is exactly the kind of Curriculum Vitae one could easily imagine among the papers on the desk of deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, if Mubarak had been about to choose a new head for one of his governments.
The only thing is that Mubarak would not have chosen an irrigation expert for the post of the Prime Minister. This posting was usually reserved for economists, something Mubarak always stuck to until his very last Prime Minister.
Hisham Qandil has almost no characteristics that distinguish him from any other member of Mubarak’s bureaucratic corps. He served as an employee of Mubarak’s governments for a long time and Egyptians have discovered that he was the Minister of Irrigation under the prime ministries of Essam Sharaf and Kamal Ganzouri. This appears to indicate that Qandil has another special Mubarak-era quality: to operate without drawing any attention to himself, or causing any fuss.
Qandil’s serene presence derives from a world of bureaucratic submissiveness. He is unremarkable and indistinguishable from his peers in everything except for his beard. The latter seems to have worked for him anyway.
[Editor’s note: In Mubarak’s Egypt a beard was seen as a sign of religiousness and, therefore, of potentially anti-regime attitudes. Some have said that Qandil’s beard helped him get the job.]
When the results of the first round of presidential elections in Egypt were announced, a heavy, depressed silence overshadowed the outcome in many areas. Half of all Egyptians had boycotted the elections and half of those who didn’t boycott the elections had not chosen either Mohammed Mursi or the previous candidate, Ahmed Shafiq.
Then driven by fear, more Egyptians voted in the next round. When the Islamist candidate, Mohammed Mursi, won and the electorate started to get to know him, they started to think that maybe Mubarak, who had always been seen as relatively uncharismatic compared to his predecessors, Anwar Sadat and Abdul Nasser, was actually quite an attractive leader.
Especially when compared to the stuttering head of the Muslim brotherhood who now pledged to choose a new prime Minister from among a group of independent figures of national standing.
Voters spent long days waiting for their prospective prime minister. They occupied themselves by contemplating individuals that all seemed more attractive and competent than their new President himself.
Political speculators wondered about [Nobel peace laureate and former head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog] Mohammed ElBaradei. Those with economic leanings plumped for [former Finance Minister] Hazem el-Beblawi.
But on the morning of July 24, when the highly anticipated name was finally announced, the one thought nearly all Egyptians had was this: “who the hell is Hisham Qandil?”
The equally shocked media soon answered the question for them. When the Egyptian people got to know the CV and the character of their new Prime Minister, it was as if some magic machine had borne a political creature, that was half-Muslim-Brotherhood and half a beast of the previous regime.
This seemed to be confirmed by earlier videos of Qandil, during which he used the wishy-washy and inconsistent speech so typical of bureaucrats during Mubarak’s regime. In one single interview discussing the Nile and water issues, Qandil talked about how there was no water crisis in Egypt and then in the next minute, gave out figures related to a new water poverty in Egypt.
Qandil’s biography comes complete without any uncomfortable sectarian issues and he also talks about poverty as though it is the responsibility of the individual who doesn’t work hard enough, or clean his or her own street.
To that sort of rhetoric, Mursi and his new Prime Minister add just a sight tinge of religious faith. They decorate the lot with a beard and some further speeches about how the country doesn’t need any more political conflict; rather it needs competent leaders – or in a nutshell, “technocrats”.
Which is exactly what Mubarak had been espousing for over 30 years.
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