Egypt's 82-year-old President, Hosni Mubarak, has let it be known that, despite ill health, he is considering running for another term in the election next year.
While some might be shocked at the prospect of such an aged, ailing leader ruling over the Arab world's most populous country, Mr. Mubarak almost certainly has other plans. If he learned anything from the man he succeeded in office - Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981 - it is to have control over who will be his successor. And such control can only be exercised if he is alive - an unlikely state, at the end of another six-year term.
The wily Egyptian leader is almost certainly trying to take the heat off his 47-year-old second son, Gamal, a power within the ruling party and the man voted most likely to succeed by Egypt's expanding economic elite. The younger Mr. Mubarak is unknown by the masses, who recoil at the thought of hereditary succession.
President Mubarak has reason to be concerned that opposition Islamists could do well in the November's parliamentary elections, especially if the prospect of a Mubarak II is a political issue.
Egypt, it seems, is at a political crossroads: The Egypt of old, with its state control and privilege, is running head-on into the fast-moving new Egypt of economic openness and the rule of law.
It is Gamal Mubarak who has spearheaded a program of economic and political reform, ushering in a new moneyed class, the people who fill the gated communities on the outskirts of the capital, away from the country's masses.
But is he part of the solution to the country's woes, or part of the problem?
Since 2002, he has been calling the shots in the powerful policy committee of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). In that unelected capacity he has seen that Egypt now enjoys lower taxes, reduced bureaucracy for businesses, limits to police immunity and freer elections.
But if Egypt is to shake off its widespread poverty and a restive Islamic movement, the benefits of reform will have to reach more than just the cream of society.
The clash of cultures was widely evident in a pair of recent high-profile court cases that have all Egyptians talking. Both involved billionaire Egyptian businessman Hisham Talaat Moustafa, a prominent member of the ruling NDP and a close associate of Gamal Mubarak.
In the first case, a criminal matter, the billionaire was found guilty last year of the 2008 murder of his ex-mistress, a young Lebanese singer, and sentenced to death. (Mr. Moustafa apparently paid a retired policeman $2-million to carry out the deed in Dubai.) Then, in late September, a second judge abruptly ended a retrial of the case before some witnesses had been heard and closing arguments made. The judge determined that Mr. Moustafa was guilty, but reduced the man's sentence to 15 years imprisonment.
In Egypt, a penal year is deemed to be nine months and the well-connected industrialist should be released in only a few years - just in time to enjoy the fruits of another legal decision.
In a separate case last month, a high court confirmed that Mr. Moustafa had illegally benefited from the 2005 purchase of a very large parcel of government land outside Cairo. The property, it turned out, had never been publicly tendered, as required by law. The court ordered the deal struck down even though Mr. Moustafa's company, TMG, already had begun work on a $3-billion development.
Not to be thwarted, the NDP government found a way around the legal ruling. It cancelled the contract, as ordered by the court, but immediately decreed that the same land be "directly assigned" to TMG in return for the same amount of money. By citing "the public interest," the government escaped any legal challenge.
In both these front-page cases, the new rule of law was applied in the first instance to bring to book a member of Egypt's ruling elite, something that wasn't always done in the past. But in each case, another court, or the government itself, stepped in to restore some of Mr. Moustafa's privilege.
It's no wonder that people aren't sure if real democratic change is in the offing.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's main opposition movement, favours many of the reforms put forward by Gamal Mubarak -such as limits to police immunity from prosecution and transparency in government actions, which tripped up the land sale to Mr. Moustafa. But the Muslim Brothers are vehemently opposed to the idea of Mr. Mubarak's succession as president.
"Gamal Mubarak is the one who introduced big business into political leadership," said Essam Eleryan, a physician and member of the Brotherhood's powerful guidance committee. "The people suffer from this kind of corruption, he said, referring to the TMG property deal. "None of the benefits trickle down to the people."
Officially banned, the Brotherhood exists in the murky grey area of Egyptian politics: It is not allowed to run for parliament, yet 88 "independent" MPs are known to be members and vote as a bloc. And while men such as Dr. Eleryan have spent years in prison only because of their membership in the organization, it's not hard to find the Muslim Brotherhood office in downtown Cairo: There's a sign on the door in Arabic and English that clearly reads "Muslim Brotherhood."
Inside, the musty offices have a 1950s look about them - wooden furniture and an all-male atmosphere. A visiting journalist is led to the boardroom, where a large oval table and comfortable leather chairs leave little room for anything else.
Allowing the Brotherhood to function so openly suggests the government's policy is to control it, not eliminate it.
"They're always on our back," says Dr. Eleryan. "They arrest a few of us here; a few there, with no charges. Then we apply to the courts and, a few weeks later, we're released." His own last arrest was in February; he was released in April.
For its part, the Brotherhood criticizes the government, but not too harshly. After all, it was the biggest beneficiary of the push for democracy directed at Egypt five years ago by the United States, and it is enjoying the status that comes with 88 MPs.
So although the Brotherhood may criticize the government's latest efforts to stifle live media broadcasts heading into the parliamentary vote, it still plans on running candidates, candidates opposed to a Gamal Mubarak presidency. And it still thinks its numbers are likely to grow.
To find people who support the younger Mr. Mubarak becoming president, you need look no further than the posh lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, owned by Mr. Moustafa.
Judith Barnett was there recently, banging out notes on her laptop as she waited for her next meeting.
A senior Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration, Ms. Barnett advises Egyptian companies on leveraging U.S. support, and U.S. companies on leveraging Egyptian support.
She loves Gamal Mubarak.
"He's the real deal," Ms. Barnett says. "He's the one who brought in the reforms - cut taxes, liberalized the business environment."
"And look at the results," she says: "The economy's growing, foreign investment is up ..." and "for the first time there's a real middle class here."
A middle class? What about suggestions that the economic reforms only benefit the rich and not the people?
"I don't see that," she said.
A couple of kilometres north of the Four Seasons is Shubra, where about four million average Egyptians live. These people, who are neither the moneyed crowd, not the poor who fill Cairo's slums, are the country's real middle class. With their small businesses, technical vocations and college educations, they are the folks that Gamal Mubarak's reforms must reach and the ones who will judge his possible presidency.
What do these people think of the high-flying, recently married Gamal Mubarak and his vaunted reforms?
Here, on the fourth floor of a dingy five-storey apartment building typical of Shubra, 29-year-old Ashraf lives in a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and sister. He earns 900 Egyptian pounds a month (about five dollars a day) working six days a week at an antique store in a fashionable neighbourhood three bus rides away. His sister, a pharmacist at a major hospital, earns about seven dollars a day. Together, they make ends meet.for their family.
Sammy, who lives in a slightly nicer building with his wife and three-year-old daughter, can't earn enough as a policeman by day, so he sheds the uniform and drives a cab every night until 2:00 AM.
Uday owns a neighbourhood tea room, where men sit to talk and play backgammon. As the men talk of life, football and politics, one thing they agree on is how hard it is to survive financially.
"I can't afford to hire help," says Uday. "So I work very long hours. I never get to see my family."
There's no evidence these people are cashing in on the reforms brought in since 2002.
"The government is working very hard to ensure that people are benefiting from these reforms," insists the dapper Trade and Industry Minister, Rachid Mohamed Rachid. "Workers," he said, for example, "are receiving more training on the job than before in order to ensure that they are more competitive and have the skills the market needs."
But the fact is, he emphasized, "reforms, take time."
Reforms do indeed take time, says economist Ahmed Galal, "but the government has paid much more attention to the growth side of the economy, and not enough to the equality side."
Coming from Mr. Galal, this is a serious warning. While Gamal Mubarak is responsible for implementing reforms, it is Mr. Galal who is greatly responsible for the theories behind them.
A former senior economist at the World Bank, Mr. Galal was the recent director of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies (ECES), a think-tank dedicated to economic development. from which four of Egypt's current cabinet ministers (including Mr. Rachid) hail, and on whose board Gamal Mubarak and several prominent industrialists sit. "There's not enough focus on the social agenda," he explained, "not nearly enough on the quality of education, for example."
Improving people's "education is perhaps the best way to distribute opportunity" in society, added Mr. Galal, author of a recent World Bank report titled The Road Not Taken, the story of education reform in countries such as Egypt.
Despite the shortcomings of reforms to date, Egypt has no choice but to push on with them, raising the level of social and political reforms to those of the economy, he says. "The three tracks must advance together."
In that case, should the reform-minded Gamal Mubarak be the one to lead it?
"What matters isn't who the next president will be," said Mr. Galal, "but how he's chosen."
"I like what Churchill said," he added, "that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others."
Back in Shubra, the men in Uday's tea room agree with that sentiment.
"The thing about Gamal," one says, "is he's never touched the real people. He's never waited for a bus, never run out of money."
"His biggest problem," said another, "is his last name."
"This isn't Syria," he explained. "In Egypt, sons don't become president."