Let us hope Mideast uprisings turn out like Prague 1989, not Tehran 1979

IT is too early to say we are witnessing the much-vaunted Arab Spring in the Middle East. The removal of Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abadine Ben Ali from power cannot be said to symbolise victories for democracy in Egypt, at least not at this stage. Instead, what we have seen are popular coups.

Take Egypt. The Egyptian constitution does not provide for a president to hand over the reins of office to the army but that is what has happened. To date, the Egyptian people, from everything we can see, have accepted the situation in the short term but, one suspects, there are a dozen different preferred outcomes.

For now, the Egyptian army is just anxious to maintain its ties to the millions-strong crowds in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere. As we know from our own history, though, soldiers can be greeted with cups of tea one day and bullets in the back very soon afterwards. And, for all their might, how representative are those crowds in a country of 80 million?