2011… To Be Continued

Posted on | januari 1, 2012 | 1 Comment

2011 will be remembered as the year a young Arab generation leaders, intellectuals, and parents thought to be politically vain, unengaged, timorous, convulsed and toppled three dictators and caused others to reassess their positions, make concessions, and reform their ways. So many died for intangible ideals such as freedom, social justice and equity, democracy. Others wanted nothing more than an honest job, a decent living, a dignified existence. Many hold Mohmmed Bouazizi’s self-immolation as the catalyst of the revolution that spread like wild fire. Somehow his demise pinched a nerve many believed neuroparalytic.

Bouazizi is hardly exceptional in the Arab world. In fact, his plight is rather mundane. Many young Arabs eke out a living in ways fraught with danger and uncertainty and are constantly harassed by corrupt police. Their meager sources of income have always been targets to unscrupulous legislations. Many young Arabs self-immolated when their options were drastically reduced and their legitimate grievances were ignored by their political leaders.

Somehow, Tunisians decided that the government’s lack of compassion with Bouazizi’s plight was a slap across the nation’s collective face. Its judicial unctuousness could no longer dupe the people. It was too much to bear. Most saw Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s pity visit to an expiring Bouazizi as a devious maneuver to appease the brewing anger of a nation that can no longer silently witness the government’s heedlessness to their needs. It blew the lid on the feral rage Tunisians felt about their precarious economy while Ben Ali and others of his ilk are basking in lavishness.

The Egyptian and Libyan revolutions have been fairly successful because people have come to grips with their own strength as powerful brokers of change in countries where the only change ever allowed was seldom palliative to the people and always initiated by unrepresentative prehensile officials. I say fairly successful because the revolution is ongoing. It has become clear that Arab Heads of States are only the tip of the iceberg. Behind the dictators stand a more powerful oligarchy that has demonstrated it has no compunction thrust one of their members on the gallows to save the status quo. People in Tunisia understood that Ben Ali, and Mohammed Ghannouchi who tried to head a transitional government afterwards, were nothing more than the executors of policies devised by the Constitutional Democratic Rally. It has become clear now that Egypt’s military has been the true drive behind Housni Moubarak. It has been suspected that many of the politicians, military commanders, and businessmen who supported and often conspired to strengthen Muammar Qaddafi’s rule are now heads of newly formed political parties vying for power in the emerging government.

Thanks to the ingenious use of social media as a political tools, the Arabs have grown quite skilled at discerning between fundamental political changes and nostrums concocted to mitigate social unrest and deceive people into believing that their will is being fulfilled.

Much has changed in the Arab World, but clearly the revolution is not over yet. 2012 promises to be a delving year for the Arab world.

(to be continued)

AUTHOR: Ahmed T. B. / Cabalamuse
URL: http://cabalamuse.wordpress.com/
E-MAIL: cabalafuse [at] hotmail.com

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Comments

One Response to “2011… To Be Continued”

Anuson
februari 11th, 2012 @ 06:40

I beviele that all the Arab youth know that there’s no Arab dignity as long as the zionists are invading a central part of our land and challenging our dignity…. this, and I beviele it will, should be the next challenge for the Arabs… simply because the zionists entity was intentionally planted by the West to keep dividing the Arabs and threatening them … the will no be Arab dignity or unity without wiping out the zionist entity….. and I beviele that the Palestinian question was, and still, a central element in the Arab Youth’s thinking !!…..I was all the time proud to be an Arab… I never lost my deep faith that we are a great nation…even at the time many shallow-minded arabs lost their faith and dignity, I never did and I have a great hope in the very near future …. I have always been proud to be an Arab !!