Arabs opt for democracy
On the morning of 17 December last year, 26-year-old Tunisian roadside fruit seller Mohammed Bouazizi was going about his business in the small town of Sidi Bouzid when he was caught by a woman municipal official. He didn’t have a license.
She confiscated his weighing scale. Bouazizi knew he would have to pay a bribe to get it back; it had happened before. But this time, instead of meekly accepting the ‘inevitable’, he got angry with the official. She slapped him.
That’s how the Arab revolution began. With one slap.
Bouszizi ran to the municipal office, stood outside, and demanded his weighing scale back. They wouldn’t let him in. So he went to a petrol pump, filled up a jerry can with petrol, and went back to the municipal building. Bouazizi stood in the middle of the traffic on the road, poured the petrol over himself and shouted: “How do you expect me to make a living?”
He got no answer. So he lit a match.
It was this spark that lit two great revolutions. Four more are in progress. Bouazizi survived, but not Tunisia’s corrupt and ruthless dictator Zine Ben Ali. Spontaneous demonstrations to protest against the regime that forced Bouszizi to set fire to himself spread over the country in a matter of weeks, forcing the dictator who had ruled Tunisia with a iron hand for the last 30 years to flee.
It was a signal. In Egypt, huge, unending displays of people’s power, helped by an Army that maintained strict neutrality, forced strongman Hosni Mubarak to flee. Since then, people’s power has begun to rock Yemen, Algeria, Libya and Bahrain. The rulers, especially in the latter two countries, have reacted with the use of extreme force against protestors.
Young people in the Arab world are angry at rulers that amass fabulous wealth for themselves and the small coteries that surround them, while keeping their people in abject misery. They want freedom. They want independence of thought. But most of all, they want better lives.
This change has hit the Arab world like a flash flood. It seems so quick. Yet, is it? For, the anger has been seething for over two generations now. And it is the new generation; the one that has global connectivity thanks to the Internet, which has finally decided to stand up and fight for the change it wants.
These are countries where the majority is young people, mostly unemployed, with little or no prospect of work. In Yemen and Algeria (like in India), half to two-thirds of the population is under 25. The rulers are old men clinging to power. The young want a better country than their parents grew up in.
In Libya, they have faced aerial bombardment to demand it. They want democracy. And, if Libya’s Col Muammar Gaddafi falls, no despot in Northern Africa or West Asia is safe, including in theocratic Iran. For, Gaddafi is different from other dictators. His government gives its citizens subsidised housing, education and food, and actively funds the country’s infrastructure, unlike others.
Western countries don’t quite know what to make of this revolution, since most of these dictators were their ‘close allies’, especially of the US (except for Col Gaddafi). But if it does not want these countries to opt for Islamic fundamentalism rather than secularism, the US needs to understand that a properly democratic Arab world is a safer world for all. The US cannot, as it did in Palestine, refuse to recognise the results of a free and fair election merely because an Islamic party like Hamas gets elected. To be effective, democracy must be free, fair and for real.
