Algeria, Egypt, Syria … the end of the Arab Spring?
Hope can only get you so far, as participants in the Arab Spring are beginning to realise.
Apr 29, 2014
Hope can only get you so far, as participants in the Arab Spring are beginning to realise.
"Syria is merely the most extreme example of the way in which progress in the Arab world has been held hostage ..."Perhaps, with an allegedly democratic mandate under his belt, El-Sisi will feel able to attempt some gestures of reconciliation. If not, Egypt risks travelling down the same road as Algeria in the 1990s, when the attempt to lock out the Islamists led to civil war and mass desolation. (Hence Bouteflika's lingering popularity as the man who put the country back together.) And then there's Syria, where the Arab Spring most obviously came to grief. Its ruler, Bashar al-Assad, showed that he had more backbone than Mubarak and more sense than Colonel Gaddafi, and has gradually gained the upper hand in a bloody civil war. It's a sign of Assad's confidence that the presidential election scheduled for June 3 will apparently go ahead. Nominations close this week, but there is no doubt that Assad will run and will be overwhelmingly "re-elected" -- since of course the polls will only be open in government-controlled territory, leaving most of the actual opposition with no say. Part of Assad's strategy has been to pose as a reformer, with the new election law as a prime example. It replaces a plebiscitary system, which saw him returned in 2007 with a 97.6% "yes" vote. But even the most fervent of Assad's apologists must be having difficulties in explaining how any sort of democratic election can be held in present circumstances. Syria is merely the most extreme example of the way in which progress in the Arab world has been held hostage by wider geopolitical considerations: in particular, the increased assertiveness of Putin's Russia (a key Assad backer but also a friend to El-Sisi) and the Sunni verses Shi'ite divide that has now, for example, brought in Iraq's Shi'ite government as a Syrian supporter. Fear of Islamic fundamentalism (particularly but not exclusively Shi'ite) has also led the United States to cool its support for democracy and to support repression in the Gulf states, where the Arab Spring has mostly failed to gain traction. It would be wrong to dismiss the Arab Spring as a failure. The masses have shown that they cannot be ignored forever, and they achieved real and beneficial change in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Morocco and elsewhere. Even Egypt's prospects are not as dim as they looked in the later Mubarak era. But the higher hopes of 2011 seem doomed to lie dormant for a few years yet.
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There could be a good reason “of course the polls will only be open in government-controlled territory,” … something like being bombed by avowedly, nay proudly anti-democratic jihadis.
Here’s an idea – let those with blood on the cash fingers set up polling booths, under UN auspices, defined and then yield the votes to the aforesaid UN to count… jes’ a thought..
A better idea still, AR, would be UN-supervised free elections across the whole country. Any chance of your mate Assad agreeing to that?