Gamal Mubarak Hosni Mubarak appointed him to the General Secretariat of the ruling National Democratic Party. Bashar al-Assad's rise to power in Syria in June 2000 just hours after Hafez al-Assad's death, sparked a heated debate in the Egyptian press regarding the prospects for a similar scenario occurring in Cairo. Mubarak founded, and became chairman of, the Future Generation Foundation (FGF), an NGO supporting job training but which also served as a vehicle for Mubarak's political career. Both President Mubarak and his son denied the possibility of any inheritance of power in Egypt. More recently, this claim was made in early 2006,
Hosni Mubarak States Sameh Shoukry reported that his personal sources said Mubarak "is possibly in somewhat of bad health", while several Egyptian and Saudi Arabian newspapers reported that Mubarak was in a coma and close to death. On 12 April 2011, it was reported that he had been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack during questioning over possible corruption charges. In June 2011, Mubarak's lawyer Farid el-Deeb said his client "has stomach cancer, and the cancer is growing". Mubarak had undergone surgery for the condition in Germany in 2010 and also suffered from circulatory problems with an irregular heart beat. On 13