Nonie Darwish: Dictatorships and Revolutions
[Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, and is Director of Former Muslims United.]
The pressure in Egypt has been building for a long time and has now finally exploded – inspired by the events in Tunisia. The fact that the Egyptian government has been taken by surprise is a sign of how disconnected the regime has become from the reality on the ground. Mubarak has wasted many opportunities to transfer power to another administration peacefully. He could have gone down in history as the first Arab leader to conduct a fair election, but instead, he kept ignoring the inevitable and kept re-electing himself for 30 years, followed by grooming his son to take over. Now he will go down in history as just another Arab tyrant in the dysfunctional political history of the Muslim world.
Having been born and raised in the Muslim faith during the generation of the 1952 Egyptian revolution, in which my father held a prominent role in the Nasser revolutionary government of that time, I see things repeating themselves. The Nasser 52 revolution promised freedom, democracy, Arab Nationalism and self-rule. Nasser toppled what he called the tyrant King Farouk, promised a new era of freedom, democracy and prosperity, but ended up giving Egyptians more of the same. The era of Nasser was one of the most oppressive periods in Egyptian history, ushering in a long period of wars, socialism, poverty, illiteracy, and a police state....
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The pressure in Egypt has been building for a long time and has now finally exploded – inspired by the events in Tunisia. The fact that the Egyptian government has been taken by surprise is a sign of how disconnected the regime has become from the reality on the ground. Mubarak has wasted many opportunities to transfer power to another administration peacefully. He could have gone down in history as the first Arab leader to conduct a fair election, but instead, he kept ignoring the inevitable and kept re-electing himself for 30 years, followed by grooming his son to take over. Now he will go down in history as just another Arab tyrant in the dysfunctional political history of the Muslim world.
Having been born and raised in the Muslim faith during the generation of the 1952 Egyptian revolution, in which my father held a prominent role in the Nasser revolutionary government of that time, I see things repeating themselves. The Nasser 52 revolution promised freedom, democracy, Arab Nationalism and self-rule. Nasser toppled what he called the tyrant King Farouk, promised a new era of freedom, democracy and prosperity, but ended up giving Egyptians more of the same. The era of Nasser was one of the most oppressive periods in Egyptian history, ushering in a long period of wars, socialism, poverty, illiteracy, and a police state....