Gulf News Online Edition
'Kifaya' is the bud of a new movement on Arab streets
| By Youssef M. Ibrahim, Special to Gulf News | 08/03/2005
The recent protests in Cairo and Beirut have been organised with the chant of a new Arab movement kifaya, Arabic for enough.
The word, says the Egyptian democracy advocate and sociologist Dr Saad Al Din Ebrahim, is fast becoming a mantra for millions of Arabs wanting to seize their own destiny.
Certainly the slogan has surfaced in banners carried into those street demonstrations, but more important it has now found its way on television shows, read in opinion columns by Arab pundits and certainly advocated by millions of Arabs in the privacy of their homes from Casablanca to Riyadh.
Could this one word be a harbinger of a muscular popular Arab revolt such as the movement that guided millions of people in Eastern Europe in shedding their tired old despotic regimes after the fall of the Soviet Union?
Scepticism abounds, but so do tell-tale signs that it is in fact building up into a people's revolution, certainly in Lebanon, but also in Egypt and to some extent elsewhere in the Arab world.
Ever since the assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon Rafik Hariri on February 14, the Lebanese have taken the lead from the Egyptians, who started the Kifaya movement.
Egyptians have for a year now been asking President Hosni Mubarak not to run for a fifth, six years, term at age 77 or in the least to create the mechanism for orderly succession.
The Lebanese adopted it in their street protests as a vehicle to demand that Syria ends its 29-year-occupation of Lebanon.
Could this be early warnings of an Arab political tsunami? If so, which ruler or what Arab policies are next in the line of fire?
Certainly across the region, kifaya is now addressed to concepts of government including dynastic tyrannies handed down from father to son, massive theft of public funds, the prevalent lack of transparency in business and the conduct of the affairs of state and mental retardation spread by imposters posing as religious leaders.
To all of these, Arabs have for some time now said kifaya.
The events of Lebanon and Egypt, however, suggest that like a rain forest awakening to a new dawn, a thousand other sounds are rising from the ground across the vast Arab landscape. Arabs are questioning their conditions in varying degrees of loudness.
Freedom, human rights, rule of law, entitlement are all on the agenda for what may very well be a popular uprising which transcends the ordinary. It is coupled with another morphing of the proverbial Arab street as it re-examines America too.
Whether they like or hate American policies in this region, many Arabs catch themselves quietly approving, indeed enjoying, the pressure Washington is exerting on their governments to democratise and cleanse their act.
Around the Arab world nowadays, many will tell you: look here, starting with a messy invasion in Iraq, the Americans have delivered a few things, including ridding Iraqis of a bestial dictatorship, giving them a first taste of free elections and significant freedom of speech.
Then, they might say: whether the intentions of President George W. Bush were either good or bad, the result seems a significant advance of the human, legal and constitutional rights for 27 million Iraqis. That is something good for them, and good for other Arabs, is it not?
Raw sentiments
Surely many Syrians across the borders from Iraq must be wondering why not a similar change in Damascus?
And given the raw sentiments in the aftermath of the killing of Lebanese leader Rafik Hariri, many of those same Arabs may not mind seeing American muscle deployed against Syria to lighten up on Lebanon and clean its own government.
This may not improve the situation between Arabs and Israelis, but will certainly improve the quality of life for millions of Syrians and Lebanese.
Arab governments seem to get the point. Either under popular pressure or out of ire at Damascus, they have refrained from extending "sisterly'' support to Syria as it faces this gathering storm of American, French and world pressure to get out of Lebanon.
This kifaya tsunami has done damage in Egypt already. Its rumblings were strong enough to persuade Mubarak into a hesitant declaration that he would contest his fifth presidential term against some opponents instead of running alone in a referendum.
Whether he means it or not remains to be seen, but the kifaya folks will not let up.
Egyptians were quick to swat down carpet baggers who rushed to colour the president's concession as a great advance for mankind, reminding them that already two thirds of the world have free presidential elections.
One watched with amusement the other day when in the Egyptian and Saudi daily newspapers writers such as Anees Mansour of Al Ahram and Mamoon Fandi of Asharq Al Awsat rushed to congratulate the Egyptian leader on making what they described, with considerable chutzpa, as the first genuine reform in 6,000 years ever since the Pharaohs ruled Egypt!
The refreshing thing is that the Egyptian street greeted such vulgar declarations appropriate contempt quoting in effect, the well known Egyptian proverb which says "those with a sense of shame must be dead'' in order for anybody to make such a highfalutin claim.
The bottom line is more Arabs are really saying to their leaders words are cheap, so please show me instead of just telling me.
And for those facilitators of dictatorships, the carpet baggers and apologists they are saying as hundreds of banners carried in Beirut: "Puppets: your time is up''.
There was for example plenty of sarcasm on Saudi internet chat sites about those much celebrated municipal elections.
In truth, these internet Saudi critics were saying kifaya. Either we have free elections or we don't. There is no such thing as being half-pregnant with democracy.
It may be early days for Arab liberation to blossom, but hopefully all Arabs will remain tuned to Lebanese, Egyptian and Iraqi scenes of people's power unfolding before our eyes. |
