Clamors for democracy where none existed before

I am not sure I would jump for joy if China were to go democratic overnight. Too much of everything there. But everybody should rejoice in the peaceful uprising of just 10 mill Tunisians. And let us all hope it stays peaceful, without losing sight of the aim of a democratic and stable system of government. A country with Tunisia’s advantages should have a decent chance at succeeding: a fairly well-educated population, advanced status of women, limited poverty. Yet the dangers are legion. The pool of qualified and untainted leaders is small. The opposition parties are (so far) weak and inexperienced. The trade unions are reasonably strong but without widespread membership. The Islamist movement in exile will presumably return and enter politics as well.

The demands for a new constitution and new elections are certainly justified, but will require a long process before they can be realized. Who writes the constitution? A constitutional assembly must first be elected that can draw up a proposal, which in turn must be ratified by the people in a referendum. Only once this is completed can ordinary elections be held. In the meantime people need to survive from day to day, and the country needs to be governed.

All of this will happen under the eyes of ordinary people under shabby governments all over the Middle East. It will unfold while the regimes in Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Jordan and Egypt are watching in suspense, and while Lebanon undergoes a severe political crisis of its own. A trigger or contagion cannot be ruled out.

Algeria’s aborted elections in 1991 are not forgotten. Won by the Islamist party in the first round – the second round canceled by the military – it triggered a decade of low-volume civil war, a slow-motion sequence of atrocities from both sides that wore Algerian society down. Although Tunisia is hopefully a different kind of case, that neighborhood memory hangs over current events like a cloud.

The Muslim world needs to prove it can go democratic, and perhaps this small Mahgreb country is the one that can deliver.