The fate of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali presents an interesting development for politicians in power throughout the world-whether they rule in democracies like ours or autocracies like the two north African states which have seen eruptions of protests in the last six weeks. Yesterday's toppling of Egypt's Mubarak came after 18 days of ever-larger demonstrations against his rule. His exit from power in Egypt came about when the military leaders of Egypt-who had provided support for President Mubarak since he came to power 30 years ago-realised that the hundreds of thousands of protesters thronging streets throughout the country were not going to go away.
Egypt had become ungovernable and, in the end, it became a choice between an ageing leader and a youthful population. The military leaders chose the people, which prevented a bloodbath and a civil war from breaking out in a country through which a significant percentage of the world's oil passes. While Egyptians would be elated that the man who ruled the country with an iron fist for three decades has stepped down with relatively minimal loss of life, they should be aware that this is merely the end of the beginning. There are many, many steps that the country will have to take in order for it to become a full-fledged democracy.
The end result of this process should be a society in which the military takes a back seat and facilitates the holding of free and fair elections at regular intervals; a society where the population receives information, news and a wide cross section of views from a media free of any political control and a society where the judges are appointed based on their competence and wisdom and not as a result of their alignment to the ruling party. Clearly then, getting from here to there will not be an easy process and it may not be straightforward. Indeed, while the prospect may be greeted with a great deal of revulsion and fear in some of the capitals of western democracies, it may be that a majority of Egyptians prefer to be ruled by a group like the Muslim Brotherhood, which is described as an Islamic transnational political group which forms the opposition in many Arab states.
Such a decision by the Egyptian people, which would have to be respected by all lovers of democracy throughout the world, would change the politics of the Middle East forever-given the fact that Egypt shares a border with Israel and has had cordial relations with the Jewish state for more than 30 years.
The fact that President Mubarak has stepped aside, leaving his military colleagues in power, means that there is likely to be the temptation for one of the generals to attempt to hold on to power and not step aside and allow democracy to reign.
The question that leaders in the region must be contemplating is whether the political unrest that began in Tunisia will end in Egypt or whether there is any likelihood that it will spread-like a wildfire on a dry Northern Range hillside-to some of the other monarchies and one-party dictatorships which, as the New York Times pointed out yesterday, still hold sway in many countries in the region, including Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Yemen. The main lesson that politicians in this more tranquil part of the world should take note of in relation to the turmoil in north Africa is that there is a limit to the amount of bitter medicine that can be forced down the throats of a population by politicians-especially in a world that is so connected.
