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View across eastern Libya© David Degner |
The problem the crowds are trying to solve in the Middle East with their repeated demonstrations is alot greater than installing democracy through a system of fair elections. It's the far trickier business of peacefully uprooting a political and economic structure that serves the vested interests of a tiny minority of people. If it were a plant, the dictator is just its flowery head. It can be lopped off, though soon another very similar flower will bloom after a short spell as a demure bud. Having to dig around and uproot the whole thing, leaving a big messy hole in the ground is a completely different matter.
To extend this handy horitcultural metaphor, democracy even in developed counties seems to be not that much more than a process where through some clever grafting, you get a pleasing seasonal variation in the colour of the flower, while the plant itself largely remains the same. If they do find in the Middle East a way to remove the entire plant peacefully, fill the hole, and level out the terrain for a real fresh start then it would certainly be a great example for the entire world. I can think of few places where achieving this periodically without bloodshed would not be a good thing. It's a pity democracy as it is practiced currently cannot solve this issue, though maybe some kind of democratic process could. I wonder what that process might look like.
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