So much for Arab strongmenTunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (left)has fled the country – reportedly to Saudi Arabia – after thousands of demonstrators took to the capital’s streets to demand his resignation.
“This is a demonstration of hope,” said Moncef Ben Mrad, an independent newspaper editor. “It is the birth of a people who demand more freedom.”
The ousting of a leading Arab autocrat sparked widespread jubilation among regional democracy advocates, civil society groups, human rights activists, netizens and ordinary citizens.
“No doubt, every Arab leader has watched Tunisia’s revolt in fear while citizens across the Arab world watch in solidarity, elated at that rarity: open revolution,” said Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy.
Others were suggesting that a democratic tsunami could wash away the region’s ageing autocrats.
“There will be no way for Arab leaders to escape from this,” said Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center. “Tunisia’s reputation was of being the most stable in the Arab regimes. If it can happen in Tunisia, it can happen anywhere.”
The elation is merited and understandable, but some democracy advocates will remain cautious, fearful that Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution could yet be a re-run of Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution. One painful lesson of the so-called color revolutions is that regime change does not necessarily lead to democratization.
Some dissidents even fear that a military coup is in prospect.
A state of emergency has been declared, banning any gathering of more than three people. The military has announced a curfew from 5pm until 7am and warned that force will be used against anybody defying security forces orders.
Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi has taken over as interim president. He has announced that he will meet tomorrow with political parties’ representatives and attempt to form a government.
A veteran of the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally [RCD], Ghannouchi “is an ideal candidate,” said the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Ayesha Sabavala.
But as a regime insider and long-time confidante of Ben Ali he may prove unacceptable to opposition groups.
“The ruling party will to try maintain its grip on power, but the party is even more discredited than Ben Ali himself,” said Radwan Masmoudi, an exiled Tunisian democracy advocate who heads the US-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy.
“The only solution is a national unity government, followed by free and fair elections under international monitoring,” he told Democracy Digest. “This is very feasible and doable.”
Veteran opposition activists and many of the grass-roots activists emerging from the recent wave of unrest will be suspicious of any deal that leaves the ruling party in power and reluctant to accept anything less than a genuine democratic transition.
“This is a crucial moment. There is a change of regime under way. Now it’s the succession,” said opposition leader Najib Chebbi.”It must lead to profound reforms, to reform the law and let the people choose.”
Western diplomats consider Chebbi the opposition’s most credible figure, but media censorship means that he is little-known beyond opposition circles.
As a result of Ben Ali’s success in stifling dissent, emasculating opposition parties and jailing or exiling potential challengers, there is no readily available alternative government.
“There really is no single party or individual who could credibly step up and take over,” says Karim Emile Bitar, a specialist at the Institute of Strategic and International Relations in Paris.
Ben Ali’s ejection from office, after 23 years in power, is raising doubts about the robustness of neighboring regimes.
“There is a danger in … getting a bit too comfortable with the ‘Arab state will muddle through’ argument,” said Stephen Cook, an analyst with U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
“It may not be the last days of (Egypt’s President Hosni) Mubarak or any other Middle Eastern strongman,” he said. “But there is clearly something going on in the region.”
The catalyst for the dramatic wave of protests was the self-immolation of unemployed college graduate Mohamed Bouazizi who set himself on fire after police confiscated the fruit and vegetables he was selling without a permit.
The protesters’ initial focus on economic grievances soon incorporated demands for democratic reform as citizens’ voiced long-repressed resentment of the ruling elite’s corruption.
“People see corruption as the main problem so there is a tie between economic development and political institutions to guard against corruption,” said CSID’sMasmoudi, an exiled democracy advocate.
The politicization of the protests and the emergence of a coalition of civil society groups to articulate popular grievances generated a demand for root-and-branch democratization that the regime could not accommodate.
“It is not just about unemployment any more,” a protester told Reuters. “It’s about freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, all the freedoms.”
As the regime stifled civil society groups, suppressed independent media and constrained or co-opted opposition parties, Tunisian labor unions played a vital role in containing violence and articulating political demands.
“This is the most impressive grass-roots movement the region has seen,” said Shawna Bader-Blau, acting regional director for the Solidarity Center.
“As I speak, the unions are mobilizing thousands of people on the streets of Tunis,” she told the National Endowment for Democracy today.
While some political parties were prepared to take up Ben Ali’s offer of partnership and even enter a coalition, the labor unions led the opposition majority in insisting on the government’s immediate resignation, organizing today’s demonstration and general strike to press their demands.
Tunisia may still prove to be an exceptional case in a region where liberal opposition groups and civil society have failed to form alliances with labor unions and similar groups which address the socio-economic grievances of the disaffected majority.
“Whose fault is all of this? The opposition’s, which has been focusing on defaming regimes and not organizing properly,” said Larbi Sadiki, a Middle East specialist at Britain’s Exeter University.
In neighboring Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak’s regime is facing an upsurge in labor militancy that remains far removed from the city-based dissidents’ campaign for constitutional reform.
“There has been such a division between economic struggles and political struggles in Egypt,” said the University of London’s Laleh Khalili. “Strikes have been going on, but not spilling into the public domain.”
Many observers are asking whether Ben Ali’s overthrow places other Arab ‘gendarme states’ at risk.
The recent riots in Algeria over rising prices and economic hardship were a reminder that the region has more than one discredited authoritarian regime presiding over a sclerotic economy chronically unable to address the employment needs of an exploding youth demographic.
“It’s the creeping realization that more and more people are being marginalized and pauperized and, increasingly, life is more difficult,” said Rami Khouri of the American University of Beirut. “You need little events that capture the spirit of the time. Tunisia best captures that in the Arab world.”
Activists and analysts are concerned that the regime’s collapse has left a vacuum which democratic opposition forces may not be well-placed to fill.
“For years, Ben Ali set about killing off political opposition parties, weakening and dividing them,” said Khadija Sharif, a Tunis-based university lecturer. “The street protests are spontaneous, not a movement with a leader.”
“Nor has Ben Ali prepared any succession of his own. It’s the complete unknown,” he said. “We’re afraid of chaos, no one knows whether there is a possibility of a military coup, or of an Islamist presence.”
Ben Ali’s domestic critics and Western powers alike have been caught off-guard by the pace of change and disconcerted by the resulting political void.
“Nobody wanted this turn of events,” dissident Taofik Ben Brik wrote in Le Monde. “Neither the microcosm of the opposition, little inclined to confrontation, nor the protective powers mindful of the well-behaved image of this little North African country.”
The experience of post-Soviet states suggests that the authoritarian legacy can have a toxic effect on a country’s political culture long after a change of regime. So it is understandable that some activists are appropriately cautious.
“There has to be profound democratic change but that will be extremely difficult,” said a senior member of the Tajdid opposition party:
If it works, it could be the first true democracy in the Arab world. But we must be vigilant and avoid all naivety. Totalitarianism and despotism aren’t dead. The state is still polluted by that political system, the ancien regime and its symbols which have been in place for 55 years.
Others are more optimistic about the prospect of a sustainable democratic transition, citing the role of the well-educated “Bourguiba generation” — beneficiaries of the progressive welfare policies of Habib Bourguiba, the first post-independence president.
Because of the secular politics and culture of the middle class professionals, the Tunisian uprising “was fundamentally different from the kinds of unrest found in neighboring countries, where popular discontent is often expressed in the language of Islam.”
With the continent’s highest literacy rate and per capita GDP of $8,000, Tunisia “should have the ability to sustain a democratic government–once the Ben Ali regime collapses,” the Council on Foreign Relations’ Elliott Abrams argues.
Similarly, Carnegie analyst El Hassane Achie believes that Tunisians’ higher levels of education and the political and economic aspirations of its large middle class “may make it more prepared for the democratic transition than other Arab states.”
Tunisians were able to tolerate Ben-Ali’s authoritarian rule as long as it delivered stability and economic security. But – as in Egypt – the passivity-for-security compact has proved to be fragile and the familiar narratives of stability vs. democracy are losing their purchase on popular opinion.
“Like in most Arab countries, the push for change in Tunisia is being led by a large population of young, educated people who no longer accept the trade-off of economic stability in exchange for political repression — they want prosperity as well as democracy and liberty,” says Karim Emile Bitar:
This is something Western nations need to realize. The way to help democracy blossom is to stop viewing the only alternatives for government in Arab nations as either repressive regimes or Islamist extremists. There’s a middle democratic road, and Tunisia may now be on it.
The end of Ben Ali’s rule “marks a rare case of an Arab leader brought down by popular revolt,” write Roula Khalaf and Heba Saleh. “It will alarm the region’s autocratic leaders but give hope to younger people that change is possible.”
