Lessons from popular discontent

Don’t get me wrong, only a mad man would support what was going on either in Tunisia or Egypt. But for as long as Hosni Mubarak was an ally of the west, he was not a bad boy. Ironically, a few days before the London riots, Mubarak was stretchered to an Egyptian courtroom along with […]

Don’t get me wrong, only a mad man would support what was going on either in Tunisia or Egypt. But for as long as Hosni Mubarak was an ally of the west, he was not a bad boy. Ironically, a few days before the London riots, Mubarak was stretchered to an Egyptian courtroom along with his eldest son, whom, we are now told, was being groomed to take over from his father in a new form of ‘democratic monarchy’ which exists in Togo, DR Congo and was primed to happen in Egypt and Libya but for the outcome of the crisis in both countries. With the west, there are no permanent friends, only partial interests and surely, the press is, as someone once said, only free to do as it is told.

For the second time in less than a month, Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to cut short an assignment and return home. Weeks earlier, the Rupert Murdoch crisis forced him to terminate an African tour when two of the country’s top police chiefs faxed him their resignation over phone hacking scandal. Last week, he terminated his summer vacation and returned to talk tough on rioters who were threatening to turn his country into a state of anarchy. The world watched with bated breaths as rioters allegedly protesting police brutality, turned around to burn and loot major shops and carry out several acts which, until recently, are only attributed to Africa and the underdeveloped world.

Twenty years ago, nobody expected that mobile technology would transform into an instrument of mass mobilisation. But China, the next global giant, saw that an uncoordinated telecommunications society could torpedo its political hierarchy and embraced it with caution. It has been criticised for its clampdown on internet and mobile phone use. Years back, Ethiopia refused to subscribe to the global text messaging service, afraid that it could be used to fracture its country and aid insurrection. In the weeks to come, security experts would be battling civil society organisations, not to talk of whether or not to halt the unlimited drive of technology with the weekly roll-out of i-phones, i-pads and other such devices, but what should be the limits of that censorship.

Across the world, we are all learning that the uninhibited advance of technology may work for the overthrow of dictatorships in the same way that it can help torpedo the so-called legitimate ones. Before the digital revolution has covered the continent of Africa, its despots, eccentrics, kleptomaniacs, sit-tight loonies would be spending a lot of their security votes on big brother projects in the months and years to come. Censorship agencies are very likely to spring up overtly and covertly.

The London riots cannot be condoned any more than any discerning mind can condone the wanton support of rebels to overthrow legitimate even if a bit despotic regimes. For once, it would appear that western leaders are wearing the same shoes it has been forcing on the feet of the likes of Gadaffi. From the demonstrations in Italy against Berlusconi’s scandals to the economic street protests in Greece and Portugal, things would never be the same. One can only hope that where necessary, the subtle lessons are learnt, which is the fact that today, leaders are so distant from reality that usually, it takes more than a few articles or news items in the popular media to jolt them to reality.

A true revolution is taking place across the globe. Young people are looking for ways of telling their governments that they need a good today and a secure tomorrow. But boxed in by the glamour and glitz of governance, most global leaders are too enwrapped in their own world to either listen or see. Years back, most of those who have participated in popular protests, either the 5 million people who marched on the streets of London, Washington and New York against the Iraq war to no avail, or to the so-called Vancouver riots in which Canadian youths turned a popular sports loss into carnage to the London looters and arsonists premising their carnage on alleged police brutality – there is a social disconnect between the people and their rulers. It is as true in America where a global economic tsunami was barely averted but with deleterious aftershocks a few weeks ago as it is in Bengazi prior to the so-called war in Libya.

A situation where youths are qualified to vote but not qualified to be consulted on issues which affect their future is what may torpedo the current world order and establish a replacement which may eventually not work well simply because it would have been based on nothing but discontent. Discontent, no matter how genuine, cannot replace an orderly, even if despotic system. Despotism robs the people the right for an orderly change of the system the same way that democracy without popular participation leads to chaos and anarchy. Whatever may be the outcome of the current crisis in London, one just hopes that this does not halt the advancement of technology and turn democratic societies into closed ones.