Hosni Mubarak's Health.

Or lack thereof.

At around 21:00GMT last night (19/6/12) rumours started to circulate that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had suffered a heart attack and died. These were immediately followed by other rumours that he's actually suffered a stroke and died or that he'd suffered a stroke an survived. There were also rumours that Egypt's interim military rulers were making the whole thing up either to distract from the controversy surrounding the dissolution of Parliament and the issuing of Sunday's (17/6/12) constitutional decree or to put pressure on the G20 Summit. Today (20/6/12) Mubarak does seem to technically still be alive and had has been moved from prison to a military hospital in Cairo where he is said to be on life support. There has not been an official press conference on the technical aspects of his condition and I have not visited him in hospital nor spoken to his doctors so I am not 100% sure what to believe.

One thing I am certain of though is that Egypt is a very tense place at the moment what with the dissolution of Parliament, the constitutional decree and the Presidential run-off. This tension is present throughout the region - which is what I think did for the Saudi Arabian Interior Minister - and has been magnified by the G20 Summit which has been billed by the USA in particular as a show down with Russia over Syria. So what I think happened is that Hosni Mubarak suffered a stroke for whatever the natural reasons are that some people suffer strokes while others don't. The medical team at the prison then resuscitated him and got him on life support as they are trained to do.

This then caused a spilt within Egypt's interim military rulers with some people thinking that it's not really the government's place to decide who lives or dies provided a court hasn't sentenced them to death. There were also people who think that he could pull through and recover. There were also people who think that Egypt could use the confusion over Mubarak's health to it's advantage - Israel did something similar with Ariel Sharon. Also the right to life/right to die issue is a highly inflammatory issue within US politics with the religious right very opposed to doctors intervening to end pregnancies (abortion) because it goes against God's will but equally opposed to doctors withdrawing treatment to people who would otherwise die without life support. Therefore it is something Egypt could possibly use to exert influence over the US. Finally there were people who thought that the divisive nature of the issue could expose the different factions of Egyptian political society to the outside world - something that would put Egypt at a disadvantage.

Sadly I simply do not have enough information to tell you what is the right answer. Ideally I would have liked to have avoided commenting on the issue as far as possible instead leaving it all a bit vague. However coming in the closing stages of the G20 Summit I felt that wasn't really an option.