Page 12, Friday January 28, 2011
The Jasmine Revolution against autocracies
Naïr in protests to converge the middle, young people and the poorest sectors of these societies.
By Eduardo Febbro
From Paris
Call Jasmine Revolution broke out in Tunisia a few weeks ago caught on like wildfire in several Arab countries, not children. Yemen and Egypt all living today who have accents revolutionary uprisings. This is a much more unique phenomenon in that the Western discourse always treated the Arab countries collectively unable to assume democratic destiny. Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Yemen and Egypt not only refute these arguments, but that threat from the root to the dictatorships that rule for decades with an iron hand and excessive privileges. Some analysts said today that it is not know which regime shall be first, but what will be saved from this wave of democratic aspirations whose protagonists are middle class and the disadvantaged young people, who are nucleated via the Internet and networks social. The world's most modern means of communication breaks as protest against the powers and Dinosaur. Protests also show the breakdown between autocracies lived hopelessly, historically supported by the West, and popular legitimacy. The sociologist and philosopher Sami Nair, a professor in political science at the University of Paris VIII, president of the Maghreb-Europe Institute of the University, discusses in this interview with Pagina/12 originality and springs of the Arab revolution. Author of essays and analysis on foreign policy bright, Nair said as the first spring of the rebellion, the central fact that fear has changed the field. It is the power he now faces a people who have lost their fear.
"The Jasmine Revolution took shape in Tunisia with the immolation of a young and then spread to other countries. Now, the revolt reached Egypt and Yemen. You said in an analysis that, as occurred in Latin America first and then in the countries of Eastern Europe, some of the Arab world wakes up to history.
"I've always thought that, at least in the twentieth century, the laboratory of peoples has been Latin America. The Russian revolution can not be understood without the Mexican Revolution. Latin Americans have invented all forms of struggle conceivable. In Latin America have experienced guerrillas, political struggles, despotism, dictatorship. From the '80s and '90s, in almost all Latin American countries fell dictatorships. This anti-dictatorship movement developed in other parts of the world, including countries in Eastern Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, the background movement that began in Latin America is coming to all Arab countries bordering the Mediterranean, and beyond, in the Arabian peninsula, for example in Yemen. The problem is that, contrary to what happened in Latin America, the movement that erupted in these countries Arabs have no address, no organization or program. It's a totally spontaneous movement that consists of two fundamental characteristics: First, it is definitely a movement that destroys the idea that these societies are doomed to live with extreme danger, the danger fundamentalist on one side and, on the other with the dictatorship as a necessary safeguard against the alleged fundamentalist threat. Now it is showing that the problem is much more complex and these countries do not want to experience or Islam or fundamentalism but basically, they want democracy. The second important element, and can remember what happened in America America, is that it is a circumstantial alliance between the poorest, humblest, with no real social inclusion, and the impoverished middle classes in recent years. In the last decade all these countries suffered a major impoverishment of the middle class and there is a fusion between the middle and the popular fund, the poorer classes entirely excluded from the process of integration into society.
"If these riots come to the end in these Arab autocracies would be experiencing a global revolution, a turning point in the history of our conception of political systems world. Always believed that Arab countries were unable to take a form of popular and participatory democracy.
"That corresponds to a very contemptuous discourse constructed by the western countries, international capitalism with headquarters in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), United States and the European Commission. These players want the Arab countries there is stability and for this they need strong regimes, dictatorships, because they care about two things: firstly that people do not migrate and, secondly, that the sources of petroleum resources are guaranteed. So they have developed that speech in total harmony with the dictators, who always repeated "our people lack political and cultural maturity and therefore can not afford democracy." We know that all that is false, that the democratic aspirations are very strong in this region of the world. I think what is happening is shown very clearly. Each situation is specific. You can not mix what happened in Tunisia, a country with a secular tradition of enlightened and educated elites, very strong, tightly knit social groups, with the situation in Yemen, where tribal, a system based on the despotic domination of a clan. The only similar is the degree of domination and control form, supported by the police or the military.
"The social explosion in Egypt has shades unpublished. In Egypt, the army plays a central role, where President Hosni Mubarak, belongs to him and where he is called to replace him, or his son, Gamal Mubarak, is a liberal who is well regarded by the military.
-The Egyptian case is very special, firstly because Egypt is an old rule of law, probably the oldest rule of law in the world. The modern constitutional state was established by Mohamed Ali in late of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that is, before we in Europe we knew what it was. But the state was destroyed by the British in the nineteenth century. In any case, Mubarak's son, Gamal, is no democracy. Gamal Mubarak is the key element of the nomenclature that dominates the country in its most liberal. The issue of liberalism can not be conceived solely as economic liberalism, unless it is to compare Egypt with China. In China we have a neo-communist political despotism and a wild liberalism actually embodies the domination of a bureaucratic elite. In Egypt it is different. It is impossible to be able to organize a liberal without democratization of society. It is essential to prevent Egypt from becoming a hereditary republic where the dictator father names his son future dictator liberal. People are looking for something else. People want the democratization of society to civil society to choose a transparent democratic debate. Mubarak's son is like his father. People do not want it because it has the example of Syria, where the son succeeded the father and ended by establishing a more or less liberal, but with the same dictatorship.
"You said that what began to occur in Tunisia and then spread to other countries is that the habit of fear has changed the field. No more fear.
"That was very important in this process. I was in Tunis when all this began and I saw the fear changing field. The revolt broke out in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid with the immolation of the young Mohamed Bouazizi. From there everything was disrupted. Until then, the Tunisian regime was based on fear. But the sacrifice of Mohamed Bouazizi turned the situation, especially the attitude of the then president, Ben Ali, who came to see the family of the victim. People realized that there was fear he had power. The same is happening in Egypt. The most important of these riots is the victory of the imagination which means they have transformed the relationship with power: now the dictators who should fear their people. That does not mean that tomorrow we will have a revolution everywhere, no. The movement can move forward, will be delayed, do not know what will happen. But what we know, and this has been built by the people, is that the powers can be changed when people yearn to change their lives and dare to confront the power to choose their own destiny. So I think we have a wave that will be developed. We are on the same story that the peoples of Latin America opened in the '80s. Then followed the peoples of Eastern Europe in the '90s and now come these people. We can not hide what is happening is also a consequence of globalization. Globalization is bad socially, but has something good, which is the globalization of democratic values \u200b\u200bin civil societies.
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