Where It Comes From and What It Means for Ben Ali. January traditionally has been Tunisia's month for political drama -- a general strike in January 1978; a Libyan-supported insurrection in January 1980; bread riots in January 1984. This year, however, January will be hard-pressed to top the previous December. The last two weeks of 2010 witnessed the most dramatic wave of social unrest in Tunisia since the 1980s. What began with one young man's desperate protest against unemployment in Sidi Bouzid, in Tunisia's center-west, spread quickly to other regions and other issues. Within days of Mohamed Bouazizi's attempted suicide in front of the local government office, students, teachers, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists, trade unionists, and opposition politicians took to the streets in several cities, including Tunis, to condemn the government's economic policies, its repression of all critics, and a mafia-style corruption that enriches members of the president's family.
Education issues complicate matters further. Is Tunisia Next? Where are the democracy promoters on Tunisia? Barely a month goes by without a Washington Post editorial bemoaning Egypt's authoritarian retrenchment and criticizing the Obama administration's alleged failure to promote Arab democracy. But now Tunisia has erupted as the story of the year for Arab reformers.
The spiraling protests and the regime's heavy-handed, but thus far ineffective, repression have captured the imagination of Arab publics, governments, and political analysts. Despite Tunis's efforts to censor media coverage, images and video have made it out onto social media and up to Al Jazeera and other satellite TV. The "Tunisia scenario" is now the term of art for activist hopes and government fears of political instability and mass protests from Jordan to Egypt to the Gulf. But the Post's op-ed page has been strikingly silent about the Tunisian protests. Thus far, a month into the massive demonstrations rocking Tunisia, the Washington Post editorial page has published exactly zero editorials about Tunisia. AFP/Getty Images. The First WikiLeaks Revolution? A wake-up call for the region. Echoes of Tunisia's unprecedented mass unrest are reverberating across the Arab world – which is watching in fascination as one of the most repressive regimes in the regions makes far-reaching concessions to people power.
Protests over rising food and fuel prices triggered emergency economic measures from Jordan to Libya and Morocco this week as dramatic scenes of street clashes in the small north African country fuelled official nervousness about a domino effect that could shake other authoritarian states short on jobs, hopes and freedoms. "Every Arab leader is watching Tunisia in fear," tweeted one Egyptian commentator. "Every Arab citizen is watching Tunisia in hope and solidarity. " The impact of Tunisia's unrest is all the greater because Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali – known to his long-suffering subjects as "Ben A Vie" ("president for life") – had been seen as one of the most effective of Arab autocrats.
The obvious contrast is with Egypt, the most populous of Arab countries.