| Egypt is more tolerant than Tunisia OpposingArgument1 #89245 Egypt is more tolerant than Tunisia, allowing a robust independent news media and an air of democracy |
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Author: MONA EL-NAGGAR and MICHAEL SLACKMAN, The New York Times
Cited by: François Dongier 10:02 PM 18 January 2011 GMT
Citerank: (3) 89238Tun. events broke psychological barrier for other opposition movementsShadi Hamid, a Doha-based Egypt analyst for the Brookings Institution, said events in Tunisia had broken a psychological barrier for the region's opposition movements."The opposition has always been unable to envision what the fall of a dictator would look like.That has now become a real thing."1198CE71, 89321Egyptian government has made concessions to the working classMost of the protests that have wracked Egypt recently have been by workers for economic reasons, and the government effectively bought them off with concessions before they began making political demands.13EF597B, 89322Algeria is not as repressive as Tunisia was.“It is not an autocracy, it is an oligarchy”: in addition to the president, there are multiple power centers (military, intelligence services, elite bureaucrats). Unlike in Tunisia there is no one target of public ire, and no public sense that protests would help to dislodge those at fault.13EF597B
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| Excerpt / Summary Mr. Hamzawy noted that in Tunisia the middle class and the trade unions joined protests that initially broke out over economic complaints, and helped transform the discontent into calls for political change. In Egypt, where the leadership continues to rely on a decades-old emergency law that allows arrest without charge, there is a lot of room for free and critical speech, offering a safety valve for expression that did not exist in Tunisia, he said. |