IT
Africa
Salma El-Wardany talks to Azzurra Meringolo
In the last week of June, Khartoum and other cities in the Sudan experienced a new wave of protests caused by President Omar Al-Bashir’s announcement of a new austerity plan. On June 18th the president had announced the progressive abolition of fuel subsidies as well as higher taxes and customs duty on luxury goods. With this plan, the dictator, in power since 1991 and wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur, is desperately attempting to increase revenue to reduce the country’s $2.4 billion deficit.
After the Arab Spring
An interview with Radwan Masmoudi
Radwan Masmoudi is the director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. A dual Tunisian-American citizen, he has worked tirelessly to improve cooperation between the two countries and to promote a moderate vision for the co-existence of democracy and Islam. As the Arab world’s best candidate for democracy, Tunisia is seen as a crucial test case – the success or failure of Tunisian democracy, Masmoudi believes, could create either a pro- or an anti- democratic wave across the Arab world. “In the end, democracy has to deliver,” he says. “It has to improve the economic situation of the people. So this is the real test: Freedom has to improve the quality of citizen’s lives.” A year after Tunisia’s unprecedented revolution, the economic turbulence threatens to spoil the democratic experiment and possibly represent a fatal setback to democratization in the Arab world. To address this risk, Masmoudi is promoting an ambitious plan to ensure Tunisia’s success: a New Marshall Plan for economic development, on the order of 5 billion dollars for 5 years.
IT
After the Arab Spring
An interview with Radwan Masmoudi
Radwan Masmoudi is the director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. A dual Tunisian-American citizen, he has worked tirelessly to improve cooperation between the two countries and to promote a moderate vision for the co-existence of democracy and Islam. As the Arab world’s best candidate for democracy, Tunisia is seen as a crucial test case – the success or failure of Tunisian democracy, Masmoudi believes, could create either a pro- or an anti- democratic wave across the Arab world. “In the end, democracy has to deliver,” he says. “It has to improve the economic situation of the people. So this is the real test: Freedom has to improve the quality of citizen’s lives.” A year after Tunisia’s unprecedented revolution, the economic turbulence threatens to spoil the democratic experiment and possibly represent a fatal setback to democratization in the Arab world. To address this risk, Masmoudi is promoting an ambitious plan to ensure Tunisia’s success: a New Marshall Plan for economic development, on the order of 5 billion dollars for 5 years.
IT
After the Arab Spring
Alma Safira
While in North Africa the Arab Spring seems to be experiencing a “post-revolutionary” phase of maturity with citizens demanding results following the uprisings, in the Persian Gulf countries the “Arab Spring” is still in an embryonic form with uncertain prospects and results. The absence of democracy in the Gulf assumes various forms of government, ranging from sultanates to emirates and kingdoms, however, in different ways all the citizens in this region have challenged their governments. In Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, those in power have felt the need to protect themselves and to do so have often resorted to force.
IT
After the Arab Spring
Francesco Aloisi de Larderel
Mohamed Morsi has been declared President, the first civilian Head of State of the Arab Republic of Egypt since 1953, when Mohamed Naguib inaugurated a line of long serving military Presidents that ended, eighteen months ago, with the demise of Mohamed Hosni Mubarak. He is also the first democratically elected President, ever. Quite independently from the result of the popular vote – which appears to have been in favour of the Muslim Brothers candidate by a slight margin – the proclamation of the victor has remained in doubt for several tense days during which the military establishment negotiated with the Brotherhood a series of very substantial restrictions to the effective powers and competences of the new President.
IT
Turkey
Nicola Mirenzi
Last week Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially announced that the Kurdish language can at last be taught in all schools, acknowledging to the large minority living in Turkey a right so far always denied and feared by the republic, as if it were a mortal threat to national unity. The positive reaction from public opinion and from the press, with the exception of newspapers such as Cumhuriyet, whose secularist line strongly follows the principles of Kemalism, proves that in the country and in Turkish society the times are ripe for moving forward towards a resolution of the “Kurdish issue”, opening up to diversity and not denying it as has always happened so far.
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President Tomislav Nikolic
Enza Roberta Petrillo
It was obvious that the newly-elected president of the Republic of Serbia, with a political pedigree that is not exactly immaculate such as that of Tomislav Nikolić, a former ultra-nationalist converted to soft conservatism and elected in May’s presidential elections, would be exposed to the spotlights of the international community. And yet, for the moment these spotlights – the burden and the delight of this leader so unaccustomed to making politically correct statements – have only confirmed the president’s hostility for the national pacification path embarked upon by his predecessor Boris Tadić.
Human Rights
Brahim El Guabli
Mauritania is the only country in the world where slavery exists in the real sense of the word with the exception the loathsome sponsor regime in the Gulf. Slavery simply means “ownership of a human being by another human being”; this ownership entitles the owner to treat “the owned” as a commodity that can be sold, purchased and inherited with no qualms, and without the “owned” having any say on their destiny. This shameful practice turns human beings into saleable and pursuable objects, and it so far has managed to sustain itself in Mauritania for various factors. Political corruption, lack of political will, the tribal composition of society, social norms and the vastness of the Mauritanian territory might be cited among many other factors that might explain the continuity of such a practice. Therefore, fighting a socially accepted practice, like slavery, requires a multiform struggle at the human rights, educational and politico-religious levels to deconstruct the politico-religious and social infrastructures that perdure its existence.
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France
Nilüfer Göle
The vote for Hollande is not so much as a radical desire for change as a possibly illusory desire to go back to the pre-crisis period. The socialists, however, have also opened up a new alternative approach to the economy. But ‘racism from above’ has led the way on this historic fight over what is normal.
After the Arab Spring
Mohammed Hashas, Copenhagen University – Denmark
Broadly, Morocco has been experiencing reform since the 1990s, but mainly since the coming of Mohammed VI to power in 1999. These reform endeavors have improved women’s rights, civil and human rights, press freedom, the business environment, social development, and education. For many, then, the most recent reforms that culminated in the constitution of July 2011, were in the making well before the Arab Spring began. Moroccan leaders acknowledge that the peaceful demonstrations provided an energetic force for its citizens to express their views on reforms under way in Morocco, henceforth hastening the pace of their implementation. Yet, resentment at extreme corruption at all levels in Moroccan society, mostly fed by the governing elite and the monarch’s entourage, economic unfairness and political exclusion brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets in Morocco in the spring of 2011, following the waves of Arab Spring started in Tunisia and Egypt. Although calls for the “end of the regime” were less widespread than in other countries, there was no mistaking the force of the public desire for meaningful reform. Although the response was mild by the standards of some countries, police broke up some demonstrations causing some injuries to members of the public.
IT
General election in Iran
Antonella Vicini
There are over 3400 candidates in the Iranian elections, the ninth in the history of the Islamic Republic. Many consider these elections a test of the presidency’s political health, since they mark the end of a period of extremely intense clashes in the Majles where the conservative front has shown little unity. The March 2nd elections are being held at a rather delicate moment for the country, not only due to the still open debate on the nuclear issue, but also because of threats coming from Israel and the situation faced by Iran’s historical ally, Bashar al Assad’s Syria. Furthermore, these are the first elections held since the 2009 presidential elections and are a test of the people’s involvement in political life, following the Green Wave protests and after the alienation of important reformists.
In depth - After the Arab Spring
Andrea Dessì
The political landscape of the Arab world has been dramatically transformed by the events of 2011. After decades of sterile politics and engrained authoritarianism Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria have embarked on a courageous journey aimed at fostering inclusive societies based on the rule of law and accountable governance. While we are only at the beginnings of what will be a long and arduous process, it is hard to believe that things will ever go back to the way they were. From Morocco to Bahrain the Arab public is on the march, and representation through elections is what they demand.
Istanbul Seminars, 16-22 May 2013
Reset-DoC's Intercultural Debates in Milan