Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Democratic protests in Tunisia gave birth to the Arab Spring in 2011. Therefore, it speaks volumes that Tunisians voted this week to return to a form of government that makes the dictatorship they revolted against back then look positively Jeffersonian. More than 94 percent of the votes backed the new constitution, which will see sweeping executive powers… Read more.
Alas, Egyptians are decrying the dictatorial rule of former general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi today in ways that make the rule of the dictator they overthrew 10 years ago seem benign. That dictator, of course, was former general Hosni Mubarak. Put another way, the ‘devil’ Egyptians knew was far better than the one they are now… Read more.
Sudan’s pro-democracy protesters celebrated the ouster of strongman Omar al-Bashir eight weeks ago. However, in doing so, they demonstrated the same naiveté as Egypt’s pro-democracy protesters when they celebrated the ouster of strongman Hosni Mubarak eight years ago. I published a commentary titled “Aping Egypt’s Ouster of Mubarak, Sudan Ousts Bashir” on April 17, 2019. In it, I admonished Sudan’s… Read more.
Sudanese protesters have been forced to block an apparent attempt to break up their sit-in outside the defence ministry in Khartoum, where demonstrators have been pushing for a quick transition to civilian rule after Omar al-Bashir was ousted as president. On Thursday, Sudan’s army announced it had removed and detained Bashir after three decades in… Read more.
Egyptians go to the polls today for a presidential election that smacks of a coronation. After all, not only is voting compulsory, but President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is effectively the only candidate. Frankly, the only uncertainty is whether he’s shameless enough to rig more than the 96.1 percent of the vote he rigged in 2014.… Read more.
In the deadliest attack on civilians in Egypt’s modern history, Islamist militants detonated a bomb inside a crowded mosque on Friday and then sprayed gunfire on panicked worshipers as they fled the building, killing [305] people and wounding at least 109 others. The scale and ruthlessness of the assault, which occurred in a small town… Read more.
Egypt’s former dictator Hosni Mubarak has left the Cairo military hospital where he had been held in custody for much of the past six years, and returned to his home in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, his lawyer said. Mubarak, 88, was acquitted by Egypt’s highest appeals court on 2 March of conspiring to kill… Read more.
Egypt’s new capital city moved a step closer to reality with the announcement that Chinese developers will largely fund the mega project. The China Fortune Land Development Company (CFLD) agreed to provide $20 billion for the currently unnamed city, after a meeting between heads of the firm and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. This… Read more.
I have been lamenting Uganda’s floundering democracy all my adult life. With respect to elections, here is what I wrote years ago in “Where’s the Outrage?! Opposition Leaders Doing Hard Time During Elections,” December 30, 2006. ____________________ Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni is no more a democratic pioneer in Africa than Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is in… Read more.
Alas, Mohammed Morsi seems fated to become a martyr for the cause of democracy in the Middle East. He became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in June 2012. But army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed him in July 2013 – in a coup that was, ironically, almost as popular as the student protests that… Read more.
