Everyone loves an election where the bad guy is ousted

THE fighting continues on the streets of Egypt’s cities and nobody is sure yet what the outcome will be of the Tunisian revolution that threw out its dictator of 30 years.

A journalist colleague who fled for his life from Tunisia almost three decades ago was exuberant — he had been home on holiday when the protests started. He took part and could hardly believe the outcome. “It was a thing you dream about but never expect”, he said.

Another colleague phoned from Cairo, caught up in the fighting where journalists were being targeted by police. He wanted to get word out that this was a genuine uprising by ordinary people, young people.

“They have the full support of the older people. Women on the streets offering them food, men supporting them. It’s not the Muslim Brotherhood”, he said.

Everyone loves a revolution where the bad guy is ousted and the people take control, bettering their lives, giving their children a better chance, taking their place in the world.

But that is unlikely to happen in Tunisia and in Egypt — if they succeed in getting rid of the man who has appointed their governments and dicated policy since 1981.

Dictatorships do not allow civil society to develop, do not allow any other views or ways of doing things to be explored.

And so it is in Tunisia, Egypt and even closer to home, in countries once or still in the control of so-called Communist leaders.

The power vacuum left when a leader is deposed will not be left empty for long. But the only groups that grow in dictatorships and are ready to take over power tend to be ideologically driven — such as Islamist groups that owe nothing to their religion but everything to a desire to impose their ideology by any means.

In Egypt ElBaradei, Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the few faces of a democratic alternative the country has thrown up, is seen as a natural leader of the opposition.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been kept in check for decades by the Mubarak regime other than for occasional atrocities that illustrate their wish to polarise the population, such as blowing up tourists.

Tunisia has a similar vacuum and the Tunisian colleague accepts it is likely to be occupied by a religious rather than a democratic group.

Nobody should be surprised at this outcome.

The US, Britain and many other big states have supported Mubarak’s iron control in Egypt irrespective of the cost to its citizens because they see him as essential in maintaining a rogue peace in the Middle East.

In contrast, few realised that Tunisian citizens were also beingruled by a dictator.

It was not raised at EU level because its foreign policy is largely to leave countries and regimes to those member states that know them well — usually their former colonial masters.

In Tunisia’s case this was France. The result, as in all these cases, is that all life was stifled and controlled by the ruling family. They formed a Mafia-like organisation. Anybody wanting to do business had to cut them in. And since their rule was largely supported by France, French companies had a good introduction — and were happy to share ownership with the ruling family.

Now with the fledgling EU’s External Action Service taking shape in earnest, will Europe continue along these lines of national interests?

Will the service form an independent policy based on values of human rights?