Washington - DC "This week's US news coverage of the downfall of Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14, focused on whether a similar scenario might ensue in other Arab countries. “Ben Ali's fate is evidence of the dangers that autocrats such as [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak face by clinging to their ideologies and losing touch with the aspiration of their citizens,” said a Los Angeles Times writer. The New York Times' Anthony Shadid wrote last Saturday that “Tunisia's uprising electrified the region,” noting that enthusiasts compared it to “the Arab world's Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity in Poland, which heralded the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe.” A Washington Post editorial titled ‘Tunisia's revolution should be a wake-up call for Mideast autocrats', published last Saturday, conveyed a similar perspective. It reads: “The ‘Jasmine Revolution', as Tunisians are calling it, should serve as a stark warning to Arab leaders " beginning with Egypt's 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak " that their refusal to allow more economic and political opportunity is dangerous and untenable.” While most analysts seem to agree that many of the conditions that motivated the popular uprising in Tunisia, like unemployment and state-led corruption, are widespread in the Arab world, reports express doubt that the Tunisian experience could be repeated elsewhere. For example, the Los Angeles Times' Jeffrey Fleishman and Amro Hassan said that dissent in other Arab countries tended to be fragmented and weak due to “religious differences between Islamists and moderates,” and contributed to mistrust among opposition groups. In the particular case of Egypt, they noted that, unlike Tunisia, the Egyptian state allowed independent news media and “an air of democracy,” and that disgruntled Egyptian workers were not close to disparate opposition groups. Other coverage has been highly cautious in concluding that the ongoing developments in Tunisia would lead to a democratic change. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum wrote that successful transitions to democracy in the past occurred gradually, and that street-led demonstrations, like the ones occurring in Tunisia, brought radicals to power like in 1979 in Iran, or could end with reactionary violence like China's Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. “I'm delighted to applaud the departure of Ben Ali,” Applebaum wrote. “I hope the government that emerges in his wake brings Tunisians greater liberty and prosperity. I wish I felt more confident that it will.”
