Some weeks back, when the popular Tunisian uprising resulted in the ouster of dictatorial President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, this newspaper had published a leading article which predicted a domino effect.

We had said that Egypt would be the next country to follow, and it did. We had also said that once Egypt’s regime fell, then a domino effect would be kicked off. It was certainly not hard to predict and protests have followed in Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Iran and other nations.

Citizens of other nations such as Morocco and Libya are also planning mass demonstrations as various news reports around the world show. But we had not only mentioned Middle Eastern countries; we had mentioned the possibility of demonstrations against other more far-flung regimes such as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and others which are much closer to home, such as Belarus and yes, even Russia.

It seems that world analysts are of the same opinion. Various articles have been published in prominent publications, warning of the possibilities of uprisings in the Russian Federation and/or former USSR Republics.

But, we have already seen instances where democracy has not quite taken root. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, many totalitarian regimes took hold of fledgling nations. These include: Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, the Ukraine, Belarus and more. We have also seen colour and flower revolutions, but some overturned themselves. In fact, the only one which can be registered with some degree of success in democratic terms is Georgia’s Rose Revolution, but even there, there have been claims that the President is heavy handed and not completely democratic.

There was also the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, which saw Viktor Yushenko being swept aside after the uprising there only a couple of years after taking office. Something similar happened in Kyrgyzstan.

One must also note that in some of these countries, such as Belarus and Tajikistan, despite being authoritarian, the leaders probably enjoy majority support from the general public. Most of this is due to decent wages, decent working and living conditions and low unemployment. This, in turn, depends heavily on Russian subsidies and demand from Russia for products manufactured in these countries.

While the possibility of uprisings weeping across North Africa and the Middle East is very real, imminent and a probability, they will not likely spread to the Eastern fringes of Europe and the Middle East. The current situation is a fitting description to the idiom, spreading like wildfire. The world will continue to watch it all unfold.