Middle East: Too Soon for Democracy?
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2012
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Edward Stourton explores the prospects for post-revolution government, following the Arab Spring. Elections are being held, but can voters be sure autocratic rule is in the past?
Contributors, in order of appearance:
Aref Ali Nayed, Islamic theologian and Libyan ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.
Khaled Fahmy, professor of history at the American University in Cairo.
Marina Ottaway, senior associate of the Middle East programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Fawaz Gerges, Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics.
Timur Kuran, Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University.
Eugene Rogan, lecturer in the modern history of the Middle East and fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.
The Right Hon. Sir Paddy Ashdown, former UN High Representative to Bosnia.
Khalifa Shakreen, lecturer in the Economics and Political Science department at Tripoli University.
(Producer: Ruth Alexander).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
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| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC, in the first of a new series of analysis |
| 0:42.1 | and 18 months on from the start of the Arab |
| 0:44.6 | uprisings Edward Sterton explores the prospects for democracy in the Middle East. |
| 0:50.0 | Remember Remember that wave of optimism about the birth of new democracies in the early days of the |
| 0:59.0 | Arab Spring to get a sense of what's happened to all that hope today, listen to this. |
| 1:04.0 | Arif Ali Naiad is an Islamic theologian who joined Libya's revolution, |
| 1:08.0 | became one of its leaders and is now one of his country's ambassadors. |
| 1:12.0 | Here he is on the BBC's hard talk last autumn. |
| 1:15.0 | What I can assure you is that three things will never happen in Libya again through the vigilance of young people. |
| 1:20.0 | tyranny will never happen again and corruption will never happen again and the overpowering by one tendency of other |
| 1:26.7 | tendencies will never happen again. And here he is talking to me for this program. |
| 1:31.0 | No unfortunately I cannot say that these three things are now absent from Libya. |
| 1:36.3 | Yes, we did get rid of the tyranny of Gaddafi, but there are little tyrants who are still |
| 1:41.7 | there and also corruption is still rampant. In this program |
| 1:46.5 | I'll ask why progress towards real democracy has been so sluggish in countries |
... |
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