Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Revolution - Where Next?

Tunisia was quite straightforward really. Egypt is becoming a long, drawn-out affair with Mubarak just not seeing the writing on the wall (long term dictators do become very myopic when it comes to seeing reality).

So who is next? In the Middle East there are many candidates. Iran may be gearing up for a second round of unrest. Already Jordan has had street protests prompting King Abdullah to reshuffle the government and demonstrations in Kuwait reflect heightened political unrest.

What about others? Perhaps the UAE is too wealthy and the population too small to cause unrest. Saudi is a good candidate, with its masses of unemployed youth and it's extremely insular society.

How about Oman? Sultan Qaboos is a benevolent dictator but a dictator all the same. He's been there 40+ years and, although the country has been dragged out of the dark ages into the 21st century there's no democracy, no distribution of wealth even though oil reserves are being exploited at a fast rate and no confirmed successor, despite a constitution giving a rather old-fashioned and potentially dangerous set of conditions for someone to succeed the current occupant. Could the good people of Oman finally feel the fresh breeze of true democracy blowing through their country? Unemployment is high, wages low, poverty growing, crime on the increase and corruption rife. Could revolution already be heard in the whispers of the disaffected masses?

1 comment:

Desertman said...

Dominoes....dominoes....

Bahrain and Yemen begin to wobble...

Iran is seething...