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The “Queue” of Peoples… and Rulers
Published in AL HAYAT on 21 - 03 - 2011

Some Arab rulers drive one to wish for foreign intervention, in order to save their peoples from their rule! Such rulers make one criticize the delay of planes, missiles and submarines to bomb the ruler's fortresses and the country's infrastructure, so that he may stop shedding his people's blood any further, or that he may be convinced that the time has come for him to relinquish his position and leave. Some Arab rulers believe their own delusions, imagining that they could make the disc of the sun disappear by simply placing their hands before it! We have reached such a state that we “cheer for” the coming of fleets, warships, planes and plane-carriers to the borders of an Arab country, because the ruler there has left his people or us with no other choice. This or that ruler cannot imagine standing in a single line (queue) with citizens who bear the same nationality.
Thus contradiction has appeared between two neighboring Arab countries. Indeed, the Brother Colonel has become “bull-headed” and insists on purifying his country from its people, and to lay the land to waste until he and his family remain in place. His imagination has run so wild that it has made him believe that the world would let him destroy his country over its people, refusing to even acknowledge what has become a reality. At that same time, Egyptians were standing in long queues to exercise for the first time in decades their right to vote freely and directly on constitutional amendments. In the same place that only former President Hosni Mubarak and his family used to enter, the inhabitants of the Heliopolis district stood in long lines in front of polling committees without Mubarak showing up, as the place can no longer fit the people and the toppled President. Times have changed, and what used to be allowed is no longer acceptable. That is why those standing in queues would have angry reactions when someone would try to go past them, obtaining a privilege that is no longer given to any citizens, even if they are state officials. In fact, most state officials and public figures, save a few, have realized that times have changed and have stood in “queues” to reach polling stations. As for those of them who sought to go past people, they did not meet with applause and “cheers” as used to take place, but rather objection in words and in deeds, in addition to being “smeared” in the media.
In the days of Hosni Mubarak, streets would be emptied, traffic would be stopped, and traffic jams would fill the land, because the President would be voting in elections both he and his people would know would be rigged, or in referendums the results of which would be known before polling stations opened.
Some Arab rulers seem as if living another life, different from the one we know. They “gauge” their peoples by spending on education, while their schools and universities teach nothing – and if they do, then what they teach is corrupt and backward. They fill the world with complaints about the cost of healthcare and of building hospitals, while these hospitals are not fit for the treatment of animals – those who enter them are lost and those who emerge from them are born again. They justify driving their peoples into poverty with the money they pay in subsidies for essential goods, while their loaves of bread can neither be eaten nor digested. That is how it was with Hosni Mubarak. As for the Brother Colonel, he deluded himself into thinking that he had solved the puzzle, when he declared that he was neither a ruler nor a president, but rather the leader of a revolution, and that he cannot resign because he holds no official position. He then began to make threats and came back to put to practice everything he had promised in terms of chaos, destruction and blood.
What is certain is that Arab peoples will never get used to seeing their rulers stand near them in any “queue”. Rather, their rulers often stand before other queues, lined up to praise them or to cheer for them. Such queues have turned into protests demanding freedom and bread. What is strange is that the events that took place in every Arab country that witnessed a revolution in the past few weeks were repeated in this or that country. Each side has maintained the same behavior, even if some of the circumstances have been different. And until rulers understand that they must stand in the same “queues” in which their peoples stand, the revolutions will continue, and they will end quite certainly with the departure of the rulers whose people have revolted against, adding to the queue of rulers who can find nothing to rule.


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