Soon as people anywhere show they cannot take more of a regime, a government, a dictator, a system... soon step in the pundits and the social stokers talking sanctimoniously about stability. Hardly had the Tunisians taken to the streets to vent their anger against Ben Ali and his band of 40 thieves that we started hearing the political and economic weirdoes of Europe insisting the stability of the region could be disturbed with negative repercussions to the markets. And of course, dare I add, their investments.
Much to their horror, when sand from the desert storm was slowly, almost grudgingly, falling back to the ground in Tunis and elsewhere in neighbouring Tunisia, the Egyptians to our east finally plucked up enough courage to start their Tahrir Square campaign to oust the repulsive Mubarak and his American-backed regime of 30 years.
Stability again was, and still is, the catchword of governments, politicians, economists and commentators in the West. As long as Mubarak gave them peace of mind, they never uttered a single word of protest at his treatment of the people and his complete disregard to even the basics of democracy, but now that Egyptians of all classes and beliefs have come out peacefully to cry enough, all Western toes are nervously twitching with preoccupation.
Not surprisingly, the Israelis, nicely camouflaged as peace lovers, have also been expressing concern, citing stability in the region when the issue has nothing to do with geopolitics but a lot with common people’s lives and livelihoods.
Stability is always good for those who are not caught in a cruel socio-political stranglehold. They get the jitters soon as some unknown local hero makes the ultimate sacrifice, as happened in Tunisia in the case of Mohammed Bouazizi, the young fruit-seller Sidi Bouzid who, fatally, set himself on fire, to ignite, if you would permit the pun, what eventually turns out to be a revolution.
Of course the stability game has been played since the advent of civilization. Kings and queens, tribal chiefs and religious rulers have since time immemorial committed themselves to stability by burning, lynching, shooting, garrotting and other creative ways of torturing to death anyone who dared disturb it. They had it good, after all, but then revolutions and uprisings were never intended to create harmony or economic well being. By their very nature, revolutions needed to disturb, to bring to an end the injustices, the inequalities and the horrific conditions imposed by self-centred, self-gratifying and self-catering despots, systems and regimes.
In the late 18th century, the French Revolution happily destabilised the whole of Europe, triggering numerous other revolutions that continue to this day when one would have thought that the princes and queens, bishops and nobles have ceased to exist, at least in their ancient modes. They have only transformed themselves into media stakeholders, economic posers, secret investors and a subservient political class that caters, as if by divine right, exclusively for them.
Graveyards are very stable, but hardly anyone inhabiting them can or will ever try to destabilise anyone or anything. Dead people won’t rise to fight a dictator, a government or a regime. If they did, Hitler and Mussolini, two genetic Christian Europeans, would have been haunted to their doom much earlier than the Allies eventually were able to defeat them.
Even on the local circuit, where revolutions in the real sense of the word are unheard of in history, give or take a few over-blown cases of public dissent, whenever a union opts to resort to industrial action or a party to public protest, there are always those who editorially and professionally claim it is going to endanger the island’s economic stability... and, so goes the underlying message, to hell with people’s rights and working and living conditions.
People in power love stability. It gives them the chance to go on hoodwinking the majority. Wouldn’t Ben Ali give his right arm to go back in time, give that poor fruit-seller a bloody licence and proclaim all’s right with the world? Wouldn’t the despotic kings and queens of old Europe, their popes and their nobles have given away some of their gold, let alone the cake, to maintain stability and retain their systems? And, much more recently, with hindsight, wouldn’t the East European regimes and one-party states have surrendered a gleaming Western car or a new electronic gadget to hold on to their empires?
The good of revolutions is in the process. They do not give anyone the chance to think or re-think. This is it, boy. It just happens and then there’s no going back unless one wants to get more instability by reacting with arms and more blood, as happened initially in Russia with the Great October Revolution.
While the Obama administration in Washington dithered and the European Union played with empty words, the Tunisians and the Egyptians de-stabilised with a purpose. When people have had enough they have other more important things than stability to think about. They have their futures, their homes, their families, their jobs, their livelihoods and, no less important, their rights in what should be a class-less society that generates goodwill which, in turn, produces individual and national well-being and, finally, if ironically, yes, stability.
The moral of the story is: you need to de-stabilise to earn stability. Our heroes in history and legend, from Jesus to Robin Hood, Castro to Mao and Garibaldi to Lech Walesa, never chose the official beaten track on their way to change. In their own different ways, they preached social upheaval and, in so doing, created the instability required that finally lead to real stability... the kind of stability that allows for social justice at all its levels and in all its forms.
The oldest and strongest emotion of humankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. Revolutions and social unrest do temporarily get into that realm, but rather than the fictitious zombies and werewolves of the graveyards, they are the work of the average men and women who make up – and matter most in – modern society.