Revenge of the nerds and post post-colonial order

I am writing this week from Stockholm, where the reverberations of Egyptian elections can be felt, as Muhammad Mursi was sworn in yesterday as the first elected president in a truly contested poll in Egypt’s long-recorded history since the Pharaohs (not freely elected, either).
Mursi is a US-trained engineer and former university professor.
In a 1987 Hollywood comedy, Revenge of the Nerds, a group of smart college students were persecuted, harassed and cast aside by stronger and more popular bullies, but eventually the pariahs gained the upper hand and turned the tables against their tormentors. Since then, that tale has become a metaphor for situations where smart, but shunned, underdogs are able to regain respect and their rightful place in society over overwhelming odds.
This script is being replayed in real life, in sharp relief but with some modifications, in “Arab Spring” countries. In a dramatic turnaround, formerly persecuted outcasts and exiles are assuming the reins of government. Must be very sweet victory indeed!
More importantly, it is testimony to the maturity of this new Egyptian awakening that the people are choosing a learned scholar and civilian professional after a string of military and appointed rulers, who had ruled Egypt for centuries. For example, all previous presidents since the 1952 revolution came from the military, accustomed to hierarchical chain-of-command obedience and totally unfamiliar with the egalitarian give-and-take of modern democracy.
In a similar turnaround, in December 2011, Moncef Marzouki was elected as interim president of Tunisia. Like Mursi, Marzouki was a professional — a physician and university professor. He too was persecuted during the previous regime and thrown in jail several times. That regime tried to muzzle his voice not only in Tunisia, but elsewhere. I remember one time, when an organization I worked with in New York awarded him its highest prize, he was not allowed to travel to New York to receive it; his daughter had to stand in for him at the award ceremony, tearful and confused. In his French exile, thugs associated with the ancient regime harassed him and tried to disrupt his antigovernment activities.
Like Egypt, Tunisia too was ruled by absolute dictators ever since it gained its independence from France in 1956.
In Libya, Mustafa Abduljalil, a low-key lawyer and former judge is the highest ranking official after the revolution. He replaced Col. Muammar Qaddafi, arguably the most colorful and eccentric ruler of modern Arab politics, who ruled Libya absolutely for over 40 years.
It is too early to say how long these professionals will be able to prevent reversion to dictatorship and change the course of politics in their countries forever.
The challenges are much too great to predict with any certainty smooth evolution from military dictatorship into sustainable peaceful democracy overnight. In Egypt, Mursi won by a slim 52 percent majority in a low-turnout election which indicates that he does not necessarily have an overwhelming mandate. In addition, the military is watching from the wings to take advantage of any opportunity. Similarly, there is justifiable fear that the Muslim Brotherhood movement, the force behind Mursi and his political party Freedom and Justice Party, may try to exercise extra-democratic influence behind-the-scenes. Other extremist forces lurk in the shadows and would take advantage of any slippage.
In Tunisia, similar tensions exist between the new order and remnants of the ancient regime and some extremist Islamists, who have little regard for the democratic process, as could be seen in violent attacks on media outlets with which they disagreed.
The tensions are clearly manifest in Libya. It appears as if the revolution had opened a Pandora’s box full of unresolved rivalries between regions and tribes, which appear to be stoked or manipulated by remnants of the old regime.
Egyptians are right to rejoice in their newly found democracy. But as we saw in Libya and Tunisia, this may just be the beginning of a struggle during which anti-democratic forces would try to regain the upper hand to reshape the future in their favor.
After all, what we have in these countries are merely interim arrangements, chosen to draw up new constitutions and reach new social contracts. We can describe them as post post-colonial orders. In the post-colonial period, undemocratic nationalist forces and independence “heroes” ruled with an iron fist and people tolerated abuse because they were happy to get out of foreign domination. That license is no longer available for current governments, whose primary function is to engineer transition toward real participatory democracy.
It would be, therefore, counterproductive for these interim governments to monopolize power and exclude minorities, be they political, social, regional, ethnic or religious. Those in power today should remember that democracy as majority rule should not be translated into tyranny by that majority. The real test in fact is how it deals with those minorities.
While it would be only human to wish to take revenge on their tormentors, today’s victors are reminded that their enemies would like nothing more than to go back to the old ways of violence. After all, those adversaries perfected that game in the past and would outmaneuver them any day. As we see in Libya today, those enemies have not wasted any time in trying to take the country back to the chaos and mayhem of Qaddafi rule.

— This article is exclusive to Arab News