US still seeks dominance over post-revolutionary Mideast

US still seeks dominance over post-revolutionary Mideast, North Africa
9 July, 2012 – By Colin S. Cavell – PressTV

Many observers, jaded by years of US indifference to the tyrannical rule of its autocratic client states, dismissed Obama’s proclamation as mere propaganda without substance. Subsequent US actions to support ‘democratic’ transitions since have both surprised regional analysts in some ways while confirming the worst of American intentions to others. However, one thing most are becoming increasingly in agreement on is the further articulation of a new US democratic model for the MENA countries in an attempt to perpetuate its continued dominance over the region.”

In the center along the North Africa coast is Libya. To its west sits Tunisia and Algeria. Facing Libya from its south is Niger, Chad, and Sudan. And to its east lies Egypt.

Flanked by six fellow African countries, Libyans are psychologically oriented towards its north which is rimmed by the Mediterranean Sea. In the northwest of the country lies the capital city of Tripoli. To the northeast sits Benghazi. And in the north center of the country, along the Mediterranean, and about midway between these rival locales, is the city of Sirte, birthplace of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, as well as the town in which he was slain in October of 2011 after 41 years of rule. Muslim-oriented for centuries, Libya and its North African neighbors, are now acting out, each in its own manner, the Arab Spring of democratic revolts.

In the far west of the Maghreb, or the western most countries which fell to the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, King Mohamed VI of Morocco acted quickly, following the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, to defuse the growth of a nascent domestic oppositional movement and proposed constitution reforms which were overwhelmingly approved by the country’s citizenry on July 1, 2011. The reforms give more powers to the parliament and prime minister and specifically require the king to appoint the government’s Prime Minister from the party which wins the most seats in competitive elections, rather than, as previously, appointing whomever he pleased. For his quick action, Mohamed VI may indeed have bought some time for the prolongation of Morocco’s 340-year-old Alaouite royal dynasty, though the democratic restructuring demanded by the Arab Spring cannot be put off indefinitely, and more power will need to be grasped by citizens’ elected representatives before there is genuine social peace.

Following the forced departure of Tunisia’s 23-year dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, who fled to Saudi Arabia, democratic elections for a new Constituent Assembly were held later that year in October. The contested elections were won by the Islamist Al Nahda party (also known as Ennahda, which translates as “The Awakening”) with 41% of the vote for a total of 90 seats in the new 217-member parliament. Its nearest rival was the secularist Congress for the Republic (CPR) party which garnered almost 14% of the vote, securing 30 seats in the assembly. More importantly, the new democratic atmosphere ushered in a proliferation of newspapers where freedom of inquiry and speech are no longer taboo subjects.

Adjacent to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez, the people of Egypt cast their votes in a run-off presidential election on June 24, 2012 catapulting Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi to victory over his secularist rival former General Ahmed Shafik. With a narrow three percentage point advantage over the ex-dictator’s henchman, Morsi ushered in the first democratic elections for the country’s leader, as citizens looked forward to a new democratic social contract after the 30-year dictatorial rule of Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February 2011. The pro-democracy demands of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who daily jammed Tahrir Square in Cairo, the focal point of the rebellion, have unleashed a fury of pent-up emotions from a population sick and tired of autocratic or one-person rule.

And, this past weekend, the National Transition Council in Libya held its first democratic elections following the downfall of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, established by the General People’s Congress (GPC) under the direction of Gaddafi in 1977. The NTC’s July 7th vote will establish a new 200-member General National Congress (GNC) whose task is to draft a new constitution before calling for a new round of general elections. With 80% of its nearly three million voting-age citizens eligible to vote, early poll results are indicating a victory by a coalition called the National Forces Alliance (NFA), led by former Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril el-Warfally, who chaired the executive board of the National Transitional Council from March to October of 2011 during Libya’s civil war. The oppositional Muslim Brotherhood allied Justice and Construction Party, led by Mohamed Sowan, is presenting the biggest challenge to the NFA’s self-declared non-ideological “inclusive” coalition. Final results are expected later this week. …more