As the Egyptian presidential election looms, Egyptians got a rare occasion in the Arab World to witness two candidates actually go through a civilized debate based on substance and ideas. Egypt continues to surprise the Arab world and make many proud. Hopefully, this debate and others will give a chance to Egyptian voters to cast their ballots in the upcoming elections based on knowledge about the candidate and not the coersion of this or that regime. Good for you Egypt!
Here is an interesting report on the subject by AlJazeera English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMnaXzBwQuU.
An article about Syria's recent parliamentary elections as reported by Agence France press via Annahar, Lebanon's daily described turnout across Syria:
http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/39354-7-killed-as-syria-holds-election-snubbed-by-opposition
It is interesting to compare and contrast the Syrian election under its new constitution with that of Iraq's a few years ago. The recent Syrian election does not seem to have appealed to large swathes of the population; and apparently several populated cities witnessing clampdown barely saw any voting. This stands in stark contrast to Iraq's which saw millions still show up to vote- notwithstanding the sectarian violence and the American occupation occuring at the time.
The conclusion to be drawn is that it seems while regimes may force people into submission, they are still incapable of forcing them to vote for something they deem unfair and illegitimate.
People can unvote with their feet after all ...
An interesting article about Kuwait, which highlights three important trends throughout the Arab world:
1) The ever-increasing demands of state employees and their effects on Arab states. Even relatively wealthy ones such as Kuwait are having issues with their traditionally well endowed SOEs (State Owned Enterprises).
2) The potential reaction of the people when an autocratic state decides to reduce, stop, or simply not increase its payments and subsidies ...
3) Once liberalization begins- as in the case with Kuwait's powerful parliament, which has proven to be highly critical of the ruling Sabah family- it is very difficult to reverse. The people indelibly begin to demand more.
Access to to the article can be found at the following url: http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/33806-striking-workers-ground-kuwait-airways-flights.
