First, President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, who was lucky to escape to Saudi Arabia with his life and wife, reportedly carrying 1.5 tonnes gold, valued at 45 million euros. Both have since been tried in absentia and sentenced to 35 years of imprisonment and fined 91million Tunisian dinars (€45 million). Swiss banks have frozen Ali's assets of €50 million stashed in them.

Next, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, imprisoned in an unseemly iron cage and undergoing criminal trial carrying a possible capital punishment, accused of amassing a fortune of between £3 and £40 billion, which has been reportedly spirited away, out of the reach of the country's ruling Military Council.

And now, Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, strong man of Libya, who ostensibly held no official title, named the ‘Mad Dog' of Africa by US President Ronald Reagan, dragged out of a drain pipe and killed with a hole in the head, whose blood-splattered, decomposing dead body was on view, to be stared at in disbelief not only by the curious onlookers in Libya, but also surely by the remaining tyrannical potentates of the Arab World waiting to savour the flavour of the Arab Spring.

Gaddafi is reported to have secretly salted away more than $200 billion in bank accounts, real estate and corporate investments.

Who next? Whoever he is, he had better know that he is a man marked for the grisly fate of Gaddafi.

WORRISOME PORTENTS

For, now that the revolution has, as the saying goes, begun to devour its own, all chances of its remaining peaceful are gone. So, he had better take a leaf out of the book of Tunisia's Ben Ali who had the alacrity to sneak out of the country in the dead of night without letting the rebels get wind of his plans.

The US President, Mr Barack Obama, would not have bargained for his call for democracy in the Muslim World given at the Cairo University on June 4, 2009, to come home to roost so soon and in such a spectacular manner, combining the domino effect with worrisome portents for the future. For, the change-over from despotism to democracy is not going to be an easy one for any of the countries in that part of the world. It is for them an untrodden terrain, binding them to unfamiliar obligations. As Mr Obama forcefully pointed out in his Cairo speech, “…elections alone do not make true democracy…there are some who advocate democracy only when they're out of power.

Once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.” Democracy means, as he put it, maintaining power through consent, not coercion, respecting the rights of minorities, placing the interests of the people and the legitimate workings of the political process above one's party, group or sectarian interests, and, finally, governing with a spirit of tolerance and compromise.

CRUX OF THE MATTER

To what extent and for how long can those in charge of the transition in Tunisia and Egypt, and leading the celebration of the elimination of Gaddafi in the newly named Tahrir Square of Benghazi, the birthplace of the Libyan revolution, be trusted to adhere to these touchstones, when even long-standing and established democracies, both in form and content, and with tested leaders, are sometimes unable to guarantee them in full measure?

“Liberation” certainly has a magnetic appeal and it is easy to get tens of thousands to gather and clap hands, wave the flags, chant slogans, and dance jigs of joy. The crux of the matter is contained in the following perceptive words of an onlooker of the tumultuous scenes in Libya:

“OK, Gaddafi is gone, but what next? Are Libyans going to behave properly and act sensibly, or will we go back to square one? There are a lot of weapons about and some are in the hands of irresponsible people.

There ware tribal tensions, too….It's true that now you can say anything you like – that's a big change from before. But what's the use if it doesn't produce results?”

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