Arab democracy on the backburner

In today´s New York Times, Hassan M Fattah paints a bleak picture of the state of reform en route to democratization. It can´t be such a surprise really. Abd al Fatah himself uses the term controlled reform, which has really been the case from the outset. The Arab world embarked on the ship of controlled reform 30 years ago. It has always been one step forward, two steps back. The regime´s always willing to liberalize the ecomomies more than creating the environment for democratic societies. It has almost always been a charade of democracy. A good show with some of the best actors around, going from a single party system or absolute monarchires , to party plurslism or semi-authoritarianism if you will, the question is when will we see the glass as half full, rather than half empty, that is when willl we see semi-democratic states rather than semi-authoritarian ones?

If the Bush administration´s definition of democracy is regular and reoccuring elections, party pluralism and transparent ballot boxes, then there is a really good chance for "democracy" in the region, but that is pretty much what we have right now. Unfortunately the current administration don´t seem to keen on creating anything, but "democracy without democrats"

This is but one sample of qoutes gauging the level of democratization in the article.

"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and advocate. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments. It was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."

Arab Democracy, New York Times