Street versus State

The contrast could not have been starker than between Tahrir and Taksim. In Egypte, the largest demonstration in human history ended in a military coup that was welcomed with fireworks and a giant party in which communists, salafists and Copts danced toghether on the grave of what was meant to become a new democracy. In Turkey, streets, parks and squares wel cleared and cleaned on orders of a government that refused to nudge an inch from its democratically received mandate or from its selfabsorbed use of state power.

In between Tahrir and Taksim we saw the streets of Brasil, where massive demonstration didn’t tople Dilma Roussef’s government, but made her respond with offers of dialogue and serious reforms. Has the street beaten the state in 2013?

The wave of demonstrations that seems to be inundating the streets and the screens of the world, is not new. Guy Fawkes and his enigmatic mask from V for Vendetta has been among us for quite a few years already. The French weekly Courrier International already put the words “2011: Année révoltée” on it’s cover two years ago. The issue looked into a long list of revolts against anti-social reforms and for political participation for marginalised or oppressed groups of citizens. Egypt and Tunesia, Chile and London, Greece and Spain were obvious places to look at, but the Courrier showed that citizens in Brasil and China, India and the USA, Israel and Morocco also found their way back to the streets. Often the scream from the street sounds fresh and creative, sometimes it is a shrill and chilling shreak.

The Turkish, Brasilian and Egyptian protesters from june 2013 belong to the same historic wave of civilian dissent. In November 2011 I interview Lakhdar Brahimi, then a retired UN-diplomat, today the UN’s special envoy for Syria. ‘In the end, democracy comes down to this’, he said: ‘A society where the government is not made up of thieves and where citizens enjoy their rights.’ As far as I am concerned, that sounds like pretty close to the demands that were formulated in Istanbul, Cairo and Rio de Janeiro.

If it is a quest for democracy that mobilized tens of thousands of citizens via Facebook and Twitter, via citizens initiatives, social movements and parties of many colors and shades, then one wonders why it is that these people turn so radically against democratically elected governments and presidents. The first answer to that apparant paradox is that winning an election is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to receive and maintain the moral right to represent the people -even the occasional majority that handed you the election victory in the first place.

That right is largely dependent on very concrete policies. On safe water from the taps, electricity on the grid, the freedom to make your own choices, affordable energy, teachers that learn your children how to read, do maths and navigate the 21st century. Elected leaders got to create access to public services and public spaces, for everybody. They got to make sure that the whole population can share in the resources of the nation and is in a position to contribute in the ceation of wealth. In other words, they go to represent the people and its long term interests, and they should be seen doing that.

This is wheret he main problem for most democracies is found: most political leaders have started believng they are elected to create economic growth, and to realise that mission, they are convinced that they have to cater to the interests of international corporations. It is considered an act of political courage to go against the interests of voters while prostrating berfore the diktats of capital.

The call to depose elected leaders is, at heart, a call to restore democracy in a time when that concept and the institutions that were build to implement it have seen their legitimacy eroding. It is obvious that the protest is susceptible for populist abuse or manipulation by a cunning military. When democracy loses its credibility, it is not only the demand for real participation that grows, but also the temptation of the authoritarian alternative. In an interview I had with Stéphane Hessel, the godfather of the Indignados who died last year, he expressed the fear that the neoliberal policies of the European institutions would lead to a growing rejection of the European project, and thus to the renaissance of intolerant and authoritarian states.

In most countries where we see citizens take to the streets in a barely organised fashion, the absence of a clear and democratic alternative is worrisome. If early elections will be held in Egypt, what will they solve? Or will the repression against the Muslim Brotherhood result in more and more violent confrontations? What would the face of a secular alternative to the muslim-democrats of Erdogan in Turkye look like? And would a Brasil without the Workers Party of Dilma Roussef be more social and democratic?

The wave of protests of this decade is not a competition between the Beauty and the Beast. Is is a collision within a rather chaotic system of rules and expectations. The good news, though, is that governments which refuse to listen to the justified demands of their populations, do get the bill presented. Not necessarily at the next election, but cash, in the streets. And that is a lesson that should be heeded, not only by Egyptian army generals and other autocrats, but also by our democratically elected prime-ministers, mayors and presidents.

Gie Goris is editor-in-chief of MO* magazine