Underlying the uprising in Tunisia and the ongoing massive agitation in Egyptis the rise of the Islamic middle class who quite rightly object to havingtheir aspirations throttled by authoritarian corruption and economicmonopolies.  Such was the self emulatingmartyr in Tunisiawho was no illiterate peasant but was a well educated young man and the prideof a well to do family who sacrificed to see him into university.

They can go on the internet andsee free peoples at work everywhere improving their lives under governmentsthat have slowly learned to just get out of the way.  It is only amazing that it took this long toget up their courage to hit the bricks.

This is a true revolt againsttyranny.  The middle class is not beenadvanced in these countries and they will try a new political system to get itall to work.

At the same time, the lesson of Iran in whichone secular tyranny was replaced by a Islamic tyranny has not been losteither.  The Army everywhere will opposesuch and the democratic process is likely to actually suppress the likes of theMuslim brotherhood. It will still be nervous times.

Whatever the outcome, allgovernments in the Islamic world have been put on notice that they must providefreedom for the middle class to breath and contribute to the political life oftheir countries.

None of this has anything to dowith radical Islam although they will struggle to take advantage of it just asthe communists used to do in days of yore. In Egypt,Mubarak did the obvious and rounded up all the Muslim Brothers leadership andput them in jail to wait out the revolt.  Unfortunately, they were all since sprung and the prison was also emptied.

To really ride out the revolt hewould have to establish a transition electoral program to divert the energyinto electing a representative government. Doing that has been problematic because autocrats never see their way toprovide a truly workable constitution and the result is usually deeply flawed.Recall Russia’sconstitution which still keeps real power away from the elected representativeslong after the original group of thugs went to their graves.

Ideally, Mubarak and the army canbe the midwife to a constitutional assembly whose first order of business is toprovide a constitution.   That way thearmy and Mubarak can be the guarantors of a successful transition and the blockto the rise of specific factions undemocratic in their objectives such as theMuslim Brotherhood.  Of course theproblem in Pakistanis that the army has been both undemocratic in its inclinations and a sponsorof the worst radicalism.  Thus such arole must be transitional.

Far more importantly, the genieis out of the bottle.  Whatever theactual outcome, the middle class has discovered it has the power to challengethe autocrat and demand representative government through the modern ability tocommunicate with cell phones and twitter. Governments can stall but they cannotcontrol the dialogue at all.

We now live in a world in whichthose secret bribes paid to your bros’ secret bank account can become known toall your fellow citizens.

The only solution for theautocrats is to implement representative government as quickly aspossible.  Otherwise, mob rule willchallenge them constantly.