Is Gamal Mubarak the Best Bope for Egyptian Democracy?

Egypt's opposition forces and Western advocates of democracy promotion all seem to agree on one thing: Gamal Mubarak should not be allowed to succeed his father Hosni Mubarak as President of Egypt. Cries of "la lil tawrith" (no to inheritance [of power]) dominate street protests carried out by the storied opposition group Kifaya, whose very name -- Egyptian Arabic for "enough" -- is as much a repudiation of the Mubarak family as it is of authoritarianism, corruption, or any of the country's myriad other ills. Egypt, they say, is not a plantation to be bequeathed from father to son, and the Mubaraks' scheme to render Egypt a monarcho-republic or gumlukiyya (in the inimitable portmanteaus of Roger Owen and Saad Eddin Ibrahim, respectively) is an evil to be resisted by all right-thinking, democracy-loving people.