The President of Tunisia, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled his North African homeland as it was engulfed by a violent, yet glorious insurrection - an uprising of just cause experts are calling the first “Twitter Revolution”, fomented by social media sites, primarily Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Ben Ali reportedly arrived in Saudi Arabia early Saturday morning according to The New York Times. (Ah yes, the House of Saud. The Saudis have never been ones to turn their back on a maleficent despot in need, like former dictator Idi Amin, who spent the remaining years of his life in Jedda avoiding justice after a career that featured the slaying of over 100,000 Ugandans - but I digress).
Tunisia’s prime minister took over, saying he was going to organize early elections to establish a new government. And this was a bad move, as the Times reports:
Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, a close ally from the president’s hometown, announced on state television that he was taking power as interim president. But that step violated the Tunisian Constitution, which provides for a succession by the head of Parliament, something that Mr. Ghannouchi tried to gloss over by describing Mr. Ben Ali as “temporarily” unable to serve.
Yet by late Friday night, Tunisian Facebook pages previously emblazoned with the revolt’s slogan, “Ben Ali, Out,” had made way for the name of the interim president. “Ghannouchi Out,” they declared.
The wave of unrest in Tunisia, a Sunni Muslim country, was driven by economic despair, widespread unemployment, government corruption, inequality, and strict censorhsip. This contagion of protest has spread across borders to other Arab lands such as Algeria and Jordan and, as The Times suggests, the incident should salvo a warning to all tyrannical Arab leaders to best mind themselves:
The fall of Mr. Ben Ali marked the first time that widespread street demonstrations had overthrown an Arab leader. And even before the last clouds of tear gas had drifted away from the capital’s cafe-lined Bourguiba Boulevard, people throughout the Arab world had begun debating whether Tunisia’s uprising could prove to be a model, threatening other autocratic rulers in the region.
Mr. Ben Ali became the president of Tunisia, which won independence from France in 1956, by seizing power via a bloodless coup 23 years ago, and was once considered a key ally in the American war on terror. But Friday, President Obama put this out of mind, obviously, while saying he applauded “the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people.” Obama also said:
“The United States stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for universal rights. We will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard.”
The antigovernment protests began a month ago when a college-educated street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi burned himself to death after police seized his unlicensed produce stand, which left him jobless. Bouazizi was like many well-educated young people in Tunisia, struggling to survive amidst economic malaise in a country ranked 17th in higher education, according to a global competitiveness report.
His death struck home, outrage poured forth, followed by rebellion which spread across the country, turning bloody when 70 protestors were shot and killed by police, which only served to fuel the revolt.
WikiLeaks cables flamed the embers of revolution that Bouazizi had lit as the secret documents elucidated the rampant corruption and profligacy of the president and his family.
Many have also credited Al Jazeera which covered the unrest months before Western media. Al Jazeera’s broadcasts forged a sense of solidarity, empowering Tunisians across the country to take to the streets en masse.
Social media was exploited to coordinate demonstrations and expose wrongdoing, defying the government's censorship gestapo. Reports of state oppression filled the blogosphere, with Twitter updates flagged #sidibouzid depicting the country’s unrest, as up-to-the-minute tweet feeds of street demonstrations and gruesome police brutality stoked nation-spannig animus.
More than 3,000 videos on YouTube have been tagged with the words, "Sidi Bouzid," the city where many of the protests took place and its ground zero, where Bouazizi set himself ablaze.
However, one must resist temptation to give social media more credit than its due for it is merely a facilitator - an enabler, whilst the underlying factor that truly inspired and drove the revolution to succeed, more than any other technological variables, was the collective pertinacious will of the Tunisian people.
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Well done. Good article.
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