Remote dictator in power after the 'Thai Spring'?
There are angry demonstrations spreading across North Africa and the Middle East against a video ridiculing Islamic prophet Muhammad.
US embassies and consulates in the four countries that rid themselves of dictatorships in the Arab Spring revolutions last year – Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia – are now under attack.
During the Arab Spring there was much jubilation in the West, assistance even. Democracy was taking over from autocracy.
In Libya, the long-time Western foe Gadhafi was being replaced by his erstwhile coup partners with the likely support of al-Qaeda.
Israel’s bulwark in the Middle East, Egypt, is replaced by the Muslim brotherhood, yet to challenge the old guard. In Yemen, al-Qaeda is well placed. Self-immolation set off the spring in Tunisia.
None of these areas has experience of democracy. The revolutionaries will feel “we are the masters now”. Democracy can only work where it is understood and where the electorate can be reasoned with.
Where the driving force is greed or religious fervour and rising from a rabble, it goes from one dictatorship to another.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob”.
But is there proof of that?
With the take-over of the government by a remote dictator after the “Thai Spring” will this land fare any better?
RICHARD BOWLER
Bangkok
