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President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali got the message.
Along with my partner I was in Tunisia during the last week of December, leaving only a few days before the insurrection that overthrew the long-standing dictator (we claim no personal credit). Soon after the Tunisian dictator fell and fled, street demonstrations and other protests occurred in Yemen, Jordan and Egypt, with the last, it would appear, on the verge of the overthrow of the government.
With Ben Ali gone and Mubarak on borrowed time, it is appropriate to speculate on what type of governments to expect in Tunisia and Egypt. The media in the United States and the United Kingdom (and perhaps in Europe for all I know) seem obsessed with the danger of "radical Islamic" regimes. By this term they seem to mean something like in Iran or in the mould of Hamas. For several reasons "radical Islamic" regimes are unlikely in these countries. It is also unlikely that knowledgeable people in the US and UK government (assuming such exist) believe such regimes will unfold. More likely is that the warnings against Islamic regimes betray a deeper game being played.
First, why are "radical Islamic" regimes unlikely in Tunisia and Egypt? The principle reason is that both countries have a strong secular past, and religious groups have not been important in the insurrection in either country. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood has had a prominent role in opposition politics for two decades because of the repression of secular parties. At the risk of oversimplification, the politics in the two countries reflect that it has been illegal to be an opponent of the regime, but not illegal to be a Muslim. It is not impossible that a post-insurrection government in both countries would have a strongly religious ideology, but it is unlikely. If religiously-oriented governments appear in Egypt or Tunisia they are likely to be similar to the one in Turkey, where the religious fervor at the base of the ruling party has limited impact on the policies of the leadership.
Extremists are likely to come to power in Tunisia and Egypt, extremists of the neoliberal variety. This has been the unenviable fate of populations that have overthrown dictatorships during the last twenty-five years. This is most obvious in Central and Eastern Europe, where not one of the sixteen countries (old or new) that moved from dictatorship to formal electoral democracy in the 1990s produced a progressive government (with the possible exception of Moldova, 2001-2008). By whatever name they gave themselves, these governments were neoliberal to the core, pursuing economic policies that were criminally callous.
If these examples are not considered relevant for North Africa, the same lesson is taught by the transition to majority rule in South Africa, a clear case of neoliberal policies in the guise of national liberation. Going a bit further back, the same transition from dictatorship to neoliberalism occurred in Argentina (under Carlos Menem, 1989-1999), Uruguay after 1985, and Mexico after the dictatorship of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional ended in 2000.
Many if not most of these dictatorships fell because of a genuinely popular and multi-class uprising, in which ordinary people displayed extraordinary courage and determination. In all the countries progressive forces were weak, especially the trade unions, brutally repressed by the dictators. When progressive forces are weak, the agents of capital are strong, and prepared as they always are to step into the power vacuum. That is the most likely outcome in Egypt and Tunisia. It is the game plan of national capital in these countries, and eagerly encouraged by the governments of the major economic powers, the United States, in the European Union and China.
From the breakup of the Soviet Union, South Africa and Latin America, we know how the game unfolds. Once the dictator flees, an interim government installs itself and discovers to its great regret that the insurrection has caused such economic disruption that a period of severe fiscal austerity is necessary. To the good fortune of the new government, the IMF will organize a recovery package for the country. This package will contain a large number of neoliberal conditionalities. Some of these, such as the "deregulation" of labor markets, will legalize the repression that the dictator carried out on an ad hoc basis. The new government will justify its neoliberal onslaught with the argument that the old dictator maintained his rule through a variety of state institutions and regulations which, in the interest of democracy, transparency and good governance must be privatized, deregulated and abolished.
This sad but probable outcome does not argue against overthrowing dictators. On the contrary, their overthrow is the necessary condition for progressive governments in the future that rule in the interest of the majority. One hopes that the moment for such governments has come in Egypt and Tunisia, more probable for the latter because of the important role played in the insurrection by the national trade union federation (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail).I fear that the decent and humane governments the courageous demonstrators seek will lie on the other side of neoliberal regimes that will parade as democracies. Aided by the governments of the United States and the EU, the agents of neoliberalism are poised to seize power and implement the interests of capital, as their predecessors have done in Central and Eastern Europe, South Africa and Latin America
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