: Would Tunisia’s change herald democracy in the Arab world? : After Tunisia, ferocious winds of change are sweeping across Egypt and Yemen at the moment. In our living memory we have hardly ever seen a street churning in the Arab world like happening today. What has happened so far and is happening isn’t ordinary. Not many would ever believe that one fine day ordinary people’s street power will bring about political change in the Arab countries ruled by authoritarian regimes. Street protests in Tunisia have already ended 23 years of President Ben Ali’s rule. And now Egypt and Yemen look on the brink.
But the big question is: will this leaderless, largely Facebook-driven, street churning of young people, cutting ideological boundaries, really bring democracy to the Arab world?
The street protests in Egypt today, demanding an end to the 30-year-old rule of President Hosni Mubarak, have gone too far as these lines were being written on Saturday. By the time these lines are in print, Egypt – home to 80 million Arab people and a trend setter in the Arab world – might have witnessed much more than what has happened by now. Or, may be, the protests would be subdued. Who knows?
In Yemen, thousands of Yemenis demonstrated in the capital Sanaa, calling on Ali Abdullah Saleh, president for more than 30 years, to step down.
Far more dramatic than what is happening in Egypt and Yemen right now has been the trigger – Tunisia’s so-called ‘Jasmine revolution’ of the last few weeks – which is acting as an inspiration for street revolt in Egypt and Yemen today.
The revolt in Tunisia is being seen as akin to what had happened in Gdansk city of Poland in 1980. That was the time when the firing of a shipyard worker – Anna Walentynowicz – from his job led to strikes and the formation of the grassroots Solidarity movement in Soviet Union – something that acted as the trigger for the unraveling of the Soviet empire.
The spark for the Tunisian revolution is said to be an altercation between a young fruit-and-vegetable peddler named Mohamed Bouazizi and a policewoman much older than him named Faida Hamdy. All this happened in a small town called Sidi Bouzid, which doesn’t even figure in the country’s political map.
After the altercation, Bouazizi – a university graduate, who after failing to get a job had taken to fruit selling – was supposed to remove his vegetable cart from the place. He had refused. In protest, Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the local governor’s building.
Within hours of Bouazizi’s self immolation, pictures and videos of his act galvanized an Internet-based disquiet, which soon ventured on to the streets. And within days, the disquiet took the shape of a national uprising calling for the ouster of the country’s long serving president and democratic reforms.
President Ben Ali’s party is said to have some 1.5 million members. But the country’s two million Facebook users are said to have outnumbered those members. Facebook – and to some extent Aljazeera’s bold reporting – are said to be the revolt’s main leaders.
Bouazizi’s sister’s popular statement to a news agency, “every Arab nation is waiting for its Bouazizi” soon had its Domino effect – streets were full of youngsters in Cairo and Sanaa, demanding regime change. Although in other Arab countries with long running authoritarian regimes there are no street protest as of now, but Internet-based social networking sites are brimming with activity. There are some unmistakable lessons from all these happenings.
In the past any such political activity in the Arab world opposing the established regimes would be seen as a recipe for regime handover to Islamist parties. That is not the case today. Today in this mobilization Islamist parties are seen to be only part of the larger process. And they are not seen to be in a position to steer the change entirely in the direction of their political vision. Interestingly, this change is calling for just and transparent governance, rule of law, better economic opportunities, jobs and curbing of rising prices. Above all, it is asking for supremacy of people’s dignity – power to vest with the people and not with the rulers.
There is another message for other countries’ rulers as well: that they can hardly afford to ignore the gulf between themselves and the young wired societies, who use social networking as a means of conveying their thoughts and building friendship networks.
What is happening is these three Arab countries have similarity with what happened in the 2010 Kashmir uprising. Facebook, Twiter and YouTube are acting as the mobilisers and the beacons, like in Kashmir. In all these countries, the revolts are leaderless, and, like in Kashmir, youth are the sole driving force.
But there are dissimilarities as well. Despite burning of the Mubarak’s party headquarters, clashes with security forces, including skirmishes with Army-driven tank columns patrolling the city squares of Cairo, not a single bullet has been fired at the protesters so far. So far there have only been three casualties – two protestors and one policeman. Crowd control is being done exclusively through tear gas shells and water cannons.
Although Egypt has banned public gatherings, and severely limited or completely shut down access to Internet and mobile phones on Friday, the protests continue.
The response from the 82-year old president Mubarak when he appeared on national television on Friday is unprecedented too – he promised to replace the ministers in his government, but called popular protests “part of bigger plot to shake the stability” of Egypt.
The last thing the protesters want is Mr. Mubarak to fix the upcoming elections to bring his son Gamal to power.
It is discernible that bringing about the kind of change made in Tunisia is not that easy in countries like Egypt and other countries of the Arabian Peninsula. But, as New York Times columnist Roger Cohen summed, “Tunis can be Act One in the liberation of the Arab mind.”
May be yes, and, may be, not.
The writer Arjimand Hussain Talib is a Srinagar-based writer/columnist and author of “Omar Abdullah: The Burdens of Inheritance”.
