Fourteen years ago, on January 14, 2011, Tunisians filled Habib Bourguiba Boulevard, the main road of Tunis, with cries of freedom and dignity as they celebrated the overthrow of the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He fled the country and announced his resignation after 28 days of non-stop civil disobedience expressed by public square “positions” in almost every city in the country, on inspired by the fearsome self-confidence of fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi in the village of Sidi Bouzid.
The victory of the Tunisian people against their longtime oppressor and his corrupt regime was so incredible, so incredible that it sparked a wave of Arab uprisings throughout the region.
In major cities from Yemen to Morocco, millions of freedom-hungry people joined the Tunisian “occupiers” of the Bourguiba Boulevard to mark the exit of their strong authoritarian regime and to liberate themselves. called As the Tunisian people saw the achievements of “karama” (honor) and “hurriyya” (freedom) a new movement was born that set the whole region on a revolutionary path of “tahrir” (freedom).
More than a decade later, the legacy of those revolutions, known as the “Arab Spring”, is mixed at best. One Arab country, Syria, which started its own revolutionary journey just after Tunisia on March 30, 2011, the armed rebels managed to oust the dictator Bashar Al-Assad just last month, after 14 a year of war and devastating loss. In other Arab Spring countries, including Tunisia, the revolution came more quickly but has been short-lived with authoritarianism, oppression and conflict re-entering the picture shortly after initial successes. are revolutionaries.
All this, of course, does not take away from the moral and political force of the revolutions of 2011. The moral symbolism of those revolutions has an enduring power – as it had a remarkable effect on people who were once the silence against some of the most coercive states in the world.
The new social and political patterns of public life that emerged behind these revolutions have suffered in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab region. The state body politic before 2011 was dominated by the political decline of devolved rulers and weakened by excessive coercion and executive power and by exclusionary practices. These revolutions gave the people of the region a voice in the nature of their governance and permanently changed the way we talk about and study post-colonial society-state relations. Arabic.
To this day, January 14, 2011, stands as a historical moment that sent a moral flare, a cry for freedom as it were, for the people who lived in the Arab geography. He embedded himself in the hearts, minds and imaginations of Arab youth seized with the clamor for a better future. The Tunisian revolution and its successors in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen drew inspiration, courage and morale from the dissolution of entire authoritarian apparatuses previously thought to be immune to destruction. suddenly, by the power of men.
However, it cannot be denied that the banners of freedom and dignity that were raised on the ruins of the regimes that fell quickly disappeared with counter-revolution.
After the overthrow of authoritarian rulers in 2011, the revolution quickly lost its luster in most Arab Spring countries. This has not materialized due to the idea of revolution itself being unpopular among the Arab population who were “square dwellers”. It certainly wasn't because the revolution was overcome by ideological rivals, including those promoting electoral democracy (or even those rooting for ” Islamic democracy”, such as Tunisia's Rachid Ghannouchi), enough time to prove or disprove their value. Instead, shifts in the counter-revolutionary barrier from Tunisia to Egypt have led to “the revolutionaries” being put on the defensive and the pressure forced them to give up their “ridiculous” demands. In fact, with the passage of time, revolts and revolutions have gradually decreased in all cases.
In places like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen with their new freedoms, political parties began to move away from the original reasons for their democratic beginnings. This separation was caused by the return of old forms of political polarization, economic and social divisions, armed militias and systemic tensions involving deep state actors and key civilians. At the same time, the wealth gap between the people who were and those who were not on the frame of the original cries for freedom and dignity remained complete. This multifaceted crisis led to the near death blow of true revolutionary transformation, ie a complete break with the authoritarian systems that had been imposed.
This resulted in the creation of Arab Spring quasi-democracies that are said to be “hybrid regimes”, with mixed brands of authority, with few of the ideals of the Arab street. demanded during the Arab Spring uprisings.
Today, the prisons of some of these “democracies” are filled with political activists accused of “conspiracy to subvert state power” – mandatory charges that many believed were limited to history bin after the revolution of 2011. The rule of law, which was one of the main demands of the revolutions, has been abandoned, and the law itself is being moved against actors who should be contributing to the country from an open public square, if not a democratic parliament. Instead of using their knowledge for the benefit of the state, they are rotting in prison cells for the crime of terrorizing the powers that be to control the state after the revolution. – out Such purges cast doubt in the minds of the people as to whether a revolution that would bring about a complete break from traditional authoritarian practices of the past would be possible.
Under such democratic backsliding, where freedom of association, participation, debate and expression are under constant threat, the elections themselves will inevitably lose credibility. Low turnout numbers speak to this democratic decline in elections held in places like Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia.
In many of the Arab Spring states, the political opposition has the same flaws and weaknesses as the ruling powers, meaning that many voters consider elections pointless, even no matter how fair and cheap they may seem on the surface. Inter-party democracy remains weak, if not non-existent. Those who lead political parties and civil society organizations tend to cling to power and baulk at a democratic change of leadership positions. As a result, those who made the 2011 revolution possible – the people – are losing interest in the electoral process.
Of course, blame for the democratic changes since the 2011 revolution is not to be placed solely on deep states or domestic political leaders.
Arab authoritarianism has been revived and revolutionary fervor has been extinguished in more than one case in the past 14 years through agreements made by post-revolutionary Arab governments with Western powers and institutions from the United States and the European Union to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For example, in countries such as Lebanon and Egypt, the IMF played a key role in keeping authoritarianism alive by providing money to governments, reducing any hopes the people might have. for new leaders or revolutionary, long-term solutions to their economic and political problems. .
The Arab street has not forgotten in August 2013 I want murderwhere security forces killed hundreds of supporters of the democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. They are also indifferent to or ignorant of Israel's genocide in Gaza and the inability of Arab states to stop it for 15 long months.
The Arab people are very aware that in their states who have experience or who may be at the helm now are only terrorist or migration watchdogs. They protect borders and try to ensure an achievable “stability” that interests regional and western leaders.
This is, perhaps, the most positive and lasting legacy of the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring in general. The “emperor” is not defeated, for sure. But it is open. Just like the vain emperor in the famous Danish story, the nakedness of the Arab states and their rulers has become impossible to hide. There are no clothes. There is no cover. There is no “democracy”, bargain politics, power sharing or free citizenship. The revolutions have built a new state-public relationship in the Arab world and let the cat out of the bag: The emperor has no clothes.
Fourteen years after the Tunisian revolution, democracy is still lacking in Tunisia and the Arab world in general. But so are the clothes of all emperors, and the Arabs took notice. The legacy of the revolution lives on.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
