By Owei Lakemfa
IT was a reverse flight: While Tunisian General, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was fleeing his country after a quarter of a century dictatorship, former Haitian dictator, Claude Duvalier alias Baby Doc was returning after 25 years in exile.

A cowed Baby Doc whom his equally ruthless father, Francois Duvalier, better known as Papa Doc, had crowned President-for-life at 19, was received by a handful of persons as Haitians, even in this their moment of despair, would want to consign the 59-year old to the dustbin of history.

Haiti was the jewel of Africans across the globe; it is the country of courageous people whose military defeat of France (then a super power under General Napoleon Bonaparte) was the first time an enslaved and colonised people would seize independence through arms struggle. That example, led by Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri Christopher was to inspire colonised people over generations.

Papa Doc who came to power in 1957 ran a corrupt, impoverishing and ruthless regime with the help of a murderous security outfit, the Tontons Macoutes. When he died in 1971, his 19-year old son , Baby Doc replaced him. The outbreak of mass protests in 1984 over rising food prices and unbearable repression signalled the sunset on the Duvalier dynasty. Finally as the protests threatened to overrun  the regime, Baby Doc  on February 7, 1986 fled in an American plane to France.

About the time Baby Doc fell and fled, Ben Ali was on the rise in Tunisia; that 1986, he was appointed Internal Affairs Minister, and the following year, he became Prime Minister and overthrew the Habib Bourguiba government. Ali  was the ultimate political manipulator and  ruthless intelligence officer  who used his position to seize and retain power for 24 years.

His fall began, like that of Baby Doc, through mass protests over rising food prices, mass unemployment and repression. The incident  that led to his fall  had seemed innocuous; last month,   the police confiscated the fruit chart of an unemployed college graduate.  The frustrated man torched himself. That fire lit  the mass protests.

The Ali regime first used force; shooting Tunisians in the streets, but rather than deter the people, the protests spread across the country. Then he labelled the protesters, terrorists and even claimed they were the Al Qaeda in the country, this did not wash. Then he sacked the Interior Minister, but this did not placate the angry Tunisians. He then announced the release of all those held over the protests,  that did not bring him relief either. He was intelligent enough to  know his time was up, so rather than be caught, he fled to Saudi Arabia, leaving behind a country in flames.

Acting President Fouad Mebazza, the Parliament Speaker is trying to restore order by asking Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi to form  a coalition government with the opposition.

Ali who trained in France and United States began his ascent to power as the Director of military security in 1958, a position he held for sixteen years. There he established his reputation as a ruthless security  man which endeared him to the government of  Bourguiba, the country’s founding president. In 1978, as Director of National Security  in the Interior Ministry, he  supervised the repression of labour protests and removal of radical labour leaders from office. He was Minister of interior, then Internal  Affairs before being appointed Prime Minister in October, 1987. One month later, he carried out a bloodless coup by getting President Bourguiba officially pronounced senile.

While retaining the repressive police, Ali released the political prisoners he had helped Bourguiba round up, and allowed multi-party elections in which he was the consensus candidate. In 1989, he was elected president  unopposed for a five-year term. He was re elected in 1994 and in October 1999, he won over 99 percent  of the votes, leaving less than one percent to be shared by the opposition. His party, the Democratic Constitutional Assembly (RCD) did not do as well in the legislative elections;  it  won only 92 percent  of the votes,  but took all the 148 contested seats.  The clever Ali had reserved 34 seats  to be shared amongst  five opposition parties.

That election ended his maximum three-term presidency. Four years into his final term, he got the constitution amended   which removed the term limit. In practice, he became the life president.

Ali’s fall is like a repeat of the events that led to the fall of General Gaafar Muhammed  al-Nimiery in Sudan. He had in 1969 led a group of radical army officers to seize power  and transformed himself into an ‘elected’ president. When hunger rumbled in the stomachs of the Sudanese, Nimiery intensified the civil war in the south and imposed Sharia. When the protests persisted, he imposed martial law, but that did not save him. Renewed mass protests in 1985 saw to his exit from power.

Mass protests or what in the Philipines came to be known as Peoples Power,  has in some  instances led to the rapid fall and flight of dictators. One of the most dramatic being that  in 1986 of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos  who had been in power for over 20 years. He was quite corrupt and so brutal that he employed assassination as a legitimate weapon against political opponents. The most infamous was the 1983 case of Benigno Aquino the opposition politician who was shot dead at the Manila Airport as he returned from political exile. His widow, Corazon Aquino became the rallying force of the opposition and contested  the February 1986 presidential elections. The Parliament announced Marcos elected but Aquino declared herself  the victor.

When the Marcos Defence Minister for nearly 20 years, Ponce Enrinle,  and Armed Forces acting chief, Lt Gen  Fidel Ramos mutinied, Aquino rallied huge crowds to form a human shield around them. Nine hours after being sworn in as president  in the Presidential Palace, Marcos and his glamorous wife, Imelda fled  to America and Corazon Aquino took over. Peoples Power has come to stay as a legitimate weapon of oppressed peoples.