TUNISIE: Ben Ali and the silly lies that our dictators tell themselves

There is something particularly ignominious for a long-serving leader to be driven out of office as if he were a chicken thief. Expelled by “his own” people no less. But it is difficult, unless you were a member of the said leader’s family or inner circle, to feel sad. Hello, Mr Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, former supreme despot of Tunisia.

Mr Ben Ali’s position looks really sorry. First, in Tunisia’s Arab neighbourhood, leaders do not just get driven out of town, at least not by the masses. If they try to organise, the leaders unleash security squads both formal and informal to beat them up, break their bones, or simply kill them. Who cares?

Second, let us place Tunisia in Africa. In black (read sub-Saharan) Africa too, wananchi just do not run leaders into exile. They complain quietly knowing if they do loudly they will be machine-gunned, tear gassed, or worse. So they wait for the military to move the chief out of the way in a coup, or for regional powers to act as in the case of Mobutu, or for the leaders to die in office as in the case of Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo or Gabon’s Omar Bongo Ondimba.

Why does the end have to be unceremonious? Misrule. That is it, no matter how much the leaders and their apologists spin self-serving tales. As protests swelled across Tunisia, President Ben Ali, in power all of 23 years, delivered a combative speech blaming foreigners and local terrorists of fomenting unrest in his country. That did not cut it.

He then fired the interior minister and promised reforms. More people massed on the streets instead, unconvinced. He cut and fled to Saudi Arabia, former home of Idi Amin. Then Muammar Gaddafi emerged to blame everything on foreigners, especially “lying ambassadors” operating through WikiLeaks.

Blaming scheming foreigners makes “third world” despots feel good. But shady foreign influence, where it exists, is just part of the explanation. In some cases, in fact, there is no foreign influence at all. Invoking a foreign hand, however, makes these despots lie to themselves that they are honest and competent leaders whose people cannot ever contemplate rising up against them because they are having it so good.

This lie assumes that the people these despots actually rule have no interest at all at a personal or collective level in how they are led. That cannot possibly be true. The Tunisians just demonstrated that. To them unemployment, corruption, especially centred around Ben Ali and family and friends, and rising food prices were real issues. They did not need cunning foreigners to tell them that. They sought a better life. It was not coming. The leaders had tin ears.

So young people such as Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old graduate who could not find a job, chose to do some real work instead of whining. He decided to vend fruit and vegetables only to be told he had no permit to trade from his spot. Whatever the validity of the authorities’ actions, Bouazizi had had it. He took his life. And so his death became the immediate spark for protests that drove Mr Ben Ali and his thuggish gang out of power.

Mr Ben Ali, 74, has lost the power he so coveted, humiliated by a people who allegedly voted him back into power in 2009 with 89 per cent of the vote. Who says elections count for much in several African countries? Except in Ghana, my home for the remainder of this month.

Ghana is the one African country that is beginning to seriously get used to the idea that people matter, that elections matter. It is the one country now where a ruling party can lose an election by the narrowest of margins and packs its bags out of government and into the opposition. The defeated party does so because there is a real possibility that if it reorganises while outside of government, it could be voted back in. This has provided incentive for governments in Ghana to be responsive to the people.

Generally in Ghana, government business now is national business, it is business that changes hands peacefully so that successive governments come in and do their bit and go. That is why oil has not had leaders changing the constitution and stealing votes to stick around.

J.J. Rawlings did his bit, his party lost to John Kuffuor’s and Kuffuor did his bit too, and his party lost to the opposition, which is now doing its bit. And if elite rumblings in Accra are anything to go by, President Atta Mills may not be returned for a second term. If he is not, it is unlikely he will disgrace himself and his country as in the manner of Gbagbo or Mugabe or Kibaki. But for as long as we have people like Mugabe and Gbagbo around, Tunisia’s example is likely to resonate. It is time it did.

Author: Bernard Tabaire, Mr Tabaire is a media trainer and consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence, email: bentab@hotmail.com
Source: Daily monitor, Saturday, January 22 2011 at 00:00