According to the constitution the ruling system consists of three main
instruments:
• The President of the Republic, in whose hands lies the executive author-
ity, and who shapes public policy. He is also Supreme Commander of the
Armed Forces, of the National Defence Council and of the Supreme Police
Council. Hosni Mubarak became head of state in 1981. During the first
twenty years of his rule he formed eleven cabinets which had an average
lifetime of twenty months.
• The People’s Assembly, which represents the legislative power. The incid-
ents that took place before the elections for this institution in 2000 reveal
much about the state of civil society in Egypt: hundreds of people were
detained without charges and Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a professor of soci-
ology and a prominent defender of civil society, was arrested, tried over
a period of months and finally sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment,
being accused of damaging the national peace. The Ibn Khaldun Centre
for Developmental Studies, which was officially registered as a civil com