Learning lessons: Protesters stay one step ahead of rulers
By James M. Dorsey
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It’s not that this year saw the toppling of the leaders of Algeria and
Sudan as a result of popular revolts, a harking back to the 2011 protests that
overthrew the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
It’s that it’s the protesters in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco rather than illiberal or autocratic regimes that have learnt the
lessons of 2011.
Had illiberal and autocratic leaders learnt the lessons, they would
not have been taken again by surprise by mass protests, often sparked by a
black swan.
Lessons learnt would have meant putting their ear to the ground,
hearing the groundswell of anger and frustration boiling at the surface over
lack of economic opportunity and basic services, widespread corruption that
benefits the few and complicates life for the many, and a clamouring for the
ability to vent those grievances.
Lesson learnt would have meant addressing those concerns before its
too late and spill into the streets in massive votes of no-confidence in the
political and economic system and its leaders.
It’s a lesson that is valid beyond the Arab world with similar
protests, like in 2011, erupting across the globe in countries such as Hong Kong, Russia, Peru, Haiti, Ecuador, Indonesia, and world-wide climate change-related demonstrations.
For their part, demonstrators in Algeria and Sudan concluded from the
2011 protests that toppling a leader was the beginning not the end of the
process.
In Algeria, protesters remain in the streets six
months after President Abdelaziz Bouteflika stepped down, battling the army for a political
process that will guarantee structural change rather than enable an electoral
process that ensures that the military and its aligned business interests
remain the power behind the throne.
Sudanese demonstrators surrendered the street only after
agreement had been reached with the military on a three-year-long transition towards civilian rule.
The Sudanese and Algerian experiences, like the lessons to be learnt
from the 2011 revolts, suggest that the playing field in the wake of the fall
of an autocrat is striking a balance between protesters’ demands for
fundamental change and the determination of elites and the military to preserve
their economic interests, some degree of control of security and safeguards
against being held accountable for past abuse.
What demonstrators have going for them, beyond the power of the
street, is the fact that popular discontent is not the only thing that
mitigates against maintenance of the pre-protest status quo.
Countries across the Middle East and North Africa, characterized by youth bulges, can no longer evade economic reform that
addresses widespread youth unemployment, the need to create large numbers of
jobs, and inevitable diversification and streamlining of bloated government
bureaucracies.
Algeria is a case in point. Foreign exchange reserves have dropped
from US$193.6 billion in 2014 to US$72 billion in 2019. Reserves cover 13 months of imports at
best in a country that imports 70 percent of what it
consumes,
“If the state can no longer deliver goods and services, socio-economic
discontent will rise further…. In order to avoid such a situation… the state
and its citizens will have to renegotiate their relationship. In the past the
state provided, and Algerians abided. This is no longer economically feasible
today, nor is it what
Algerians appear to want as they seek more transparency, less corruption, and
better governance of Algeria’s resources,” said Algeria scholar Dalia Ghanem.
Attention in the past years since the 2011 popular Arab revolts has
focussed on the consequences of the Saudi-UAE led counterrevolution that
brutally rolled back protesters achievements in Egypt and contributed to the
Iranian-backed military campaign of Houthi rebels in Yemen and the devastating
subsequent military intervention in that country as well as civil wars in Syria
and Libya.
Yet, the past eight years have also been characterized by issues-oriented protests that often involved new, creative forms of expression of
discontent.
Iraq, Algeria and Sudan rather than Egypt contain lessons for the
future.
Egypt’s field marshal-turned-president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi may have
squashed recent protests with mass arrests and security force violence, but his conspiratorial depictions of a plot
engineered by the repressed and weakened Muslim Brotherhood are unlikely to dampen widespread
discontent with his failed economic policies that have benefited the elite and
impoverished many.
Mr. Al-Sisi may have ended the protests for now, but continued refusal
to address grievances makes Egypt an accident waiting to happen.
The demography of protesters in Iraq proves the point. The protests could
have been avoided had the Iraqi government focused on tackling corruption,
ensuring the delivery of basic services, and creating jobs for university
graduates and opportunities for those who returned from defeating the Islamic
State to find that they were deprived of opportunities.
One lesson of the protests in Iraq and Hong Kong is the fact that
repressive government responses, the killing of more than 100 demonstrators in
Iraq or the banning of face masks in Hong Kong, fuel rather than calm public anger.
Said Hong Kong pro-democracy law maker Fernando Cheung: “This is adding fuel to the fire. This will mark the beginning of riots
in Hong Kong.”
Dr. James
M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow
at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director
of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture
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