After a month of steadily escalating riots across Tunisia, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali lost his grip on power Friday. The country's prime minister announced that he was taking over to organize early elections and usher in a new government as 74 year-old Ben Ali, who'd been in power for 24 years, fled the North African nation.
This is a people's revolution fuelled by a desire by Tunisian's to rid themselves of the shackles of authoritarianism and embrace democracy. It's potential consequences for the whole region are enormous. Just as strikes by disgruntled workers in the Polish dockyard in Gdansk at the end of the 1980s spread to unrest in other communist countries led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, these dramatic events in Tunisia could mark the beginning of profound change throughout the Arab world.
Could this destabilise the region, opening the door to fundamentalist Islamic forces to take a strong foothold? Or will this revolution bring democracy to totalitarian Arab nations, including Israel's largest neighbour, Egypt?
Grandpa Jonathan
Prague, Czech Republic
