Sadat inaugurated the infitah found the place transformed thirty-plus years later.

Observers who knew Egypt back in the 1970s when Pres. So, after giving it all a shot, the conclusion was, 'Scratch that and go back to 1954.' Regrettable, especially considering that Egypt had been doing pretty well in the years leading up to 2011, in terms of both income gains and institutional development. Easier said than done, given the political culture on all sides: the military, the NDP, the various one-person opposition movements, and the Ikhwan. First, there was the 'Future Generation Foundation.' Then, there was the law that required feckless, one-person presidential campaigns to create true political parties with national organizations that had to win provincial elections as a requirement to field a presidential candidate. After all, Gamal Mubarak had come back from being a playboy investment banker in London to try to create movements that would create a richer political ecosystem. By 2011, the military was apparently willing to experiment with an electoral system. Mubarak was a place holder for the military regime that took power in the early 1950s. The actual history has always made it seem that Pres. Critics swallowed the same 'man on a white horse' image that supporters invented. The theory would appear to be the result of the natural tendency to anthropomorphize everything. Unsurprisingly, the inference didn't come true either. Events quickly showed that the predicate was wrong. The theory of Tahrir Square 2011 was that the problem was Hosni Mubarak: it was 'Mubarak's regime,' so remove him and have democracy.

What legacy does egypt have