LAURENT Gbagbo refuses to let go of power. So does Muammar Gaddafi. So does Ali Abdallah Saleh. So does the ruler of Bahrain. There is always something about power which convinces those clinging to it that they can defy public opinion, can ignore the ridicule of their people and hang on. Right till the end, Hosni Mubarak thought he could trick Egyptians into staying on and making the future safe for his son. His indignant nation proved to be a step ahead of him.
Today, the ruling houses of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait remain in a state of misplaced dreams. They think they can carry on and on and nothing will touch them. The Saudis, who are not even willing to let their women drive cars, have even committed the outrage of sending their soldiers into Bahrain to help its rulers fight off the challenge from their subjects.
Power, if Metternich is permitted to use the cliché, corrupts and corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton was right. But maybe he never guessed that power could also become something of a gluttonous affair. In nearly every part of the under-developed world you observe, men and women are simply eating out of the plate called power. It does not matter that they might suffer from indigestion from an excess of the food.
It is of little consequence that this orgy of consumption on their part tends to leave their peoples undernourished and underfed. Men and women in power rarely, if ever, go through the pangs brought on by bulimia. They keep eating. And then do not forget that other important component of power enjoyment. It is the disgust their people, those very citizens in whose name they profess to rule, that comes to attend all this embarrassing demonstration of power.
There was a time not many years ago when people thought Meles Zenawi was the man Ethiopia was in need of. He replaced the stone-faced junta called the Dergue led by Mengistu Haile Mariam and was widely expected to guide his country to proper democracy. He even agreed to have Eritrea go its own separate way as a country. Over the past twenty years or so, however, the idealism Zenawi once personified has dwindled into a leadership based on intolerance of dissent.
Hundreds of political elements are in prison in Addis Ababa. And Zenawi does not go because the West keeps believing that he is the man in whose hands Ethiopia's future -- and its vested interests -- remain secure. It is just like the old days when western nations saw in the autocratic rulers of poorer nations a chance for the preservation and advancement of their economic and political interests. The interests lasted as long as they did, until a time came for the West to dump its favourite rulers. The Shah of Iran, reviled at home and feted in Europe and America, could not find a home after his fall in 1979.
And so Meles Zenawi, like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, hangs on to power. The story is much the same with Syria's Bashar Assad, who has just rejected calls for reform in a country now brimming over with intelligence agents and government minders as a way of keeping people in line. Syria's fortune has been to go through the tortuous decades of Hafez Assad and then fall into the hands of his son.
But if you think of Eritrea, where Issaias Afewerki once was admired for the clean, decent and egalitarian way in which he ran his tortured country, you will have cause anew for heartbreak. Afewerki and his fellow former guerrillas have no intention of holding elections because they think they are good enough to do the job. That attitude is self-defeating for any ruler. It is dangerous for the society such rulers preside over.
Countries atrophy when long-serving leaders outstay their welcome. North Korea is a good example. But your despair goes up many notches when you realise the Kims are not yet done with ruling. Kim Jong-il has already served notice on his people that his young son is there to take over.
Maybe you did not know that even communists have their distinctive dynasties? For that matter, have you ever wondered how an unending line of royals lords it over a land where the beauty that is Islam once took birth? We speak of Saudi Arabia. Since when did Islam and monarchies go together?
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