People Power Thai style

Filipinos, who’ve ousted two crooked presidents through non-violent “people power” watch with keen interest how Thailand’s version will play out.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra survived a no-confidence vote—297 against 134—in parliament. Since Sunday, demonstrators marched on ministries in an attempt to shut them down. The protests were peaceful and BBC have described the mood of the rallies as friendly. The Prime Minister took care not to unleash cops flailing batons and tear gas.

Filipino People Power took a leaf from Mahatma Ghandi’s 1930 march to protest the then colonial government’s “Salt Tax.” Edsa thereafter spilled over into Czechoslovakia’s "Velvet Uprising”, Ukraine’s "Orange Revolution, then Georgia’s "Rose Rebellion".

Underground radio, a samizdat press and tele-women here vaulted Ferdinand Marcos gags on the press. Foreign TV and radio broadcast that peaceful rebellion. First generation cellphones appeared six years after People Power One.

In 2001, Filipinos became first in the world to wage revolution with cellphones to oust Joseph Estrada for deep rooted corruption. They “provided the first real test of text messaging”. Howard Rheingold writes in “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution”

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” US President John F. Kennedy warned earlier.  Burma has since U-turned from its brutal suppression of the “Saffron Revolt”

In the Middle East, Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution’, jolted deeply entrenched oligarchies. Beyond petal power, “the question is how far Tunisia’s ‘Jasmine Revolution’ will go?” the Economist asks. “Apart from Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution in 2005, it is the only successful Arab revolution since the end of the colonial era.”

Part of the “Jasmine Revolution’s” outcome will be cast up by media—and it’s increasing cyberspace capacity to rip down censorship by dictators. This core of “people power” surfaced in the initial “Arab Spring” of 2011, but a chill developed as the Muslim Brotherhood gained control in Egypt and chaos prevailed in Libya and Syria.

“It’s a second revolution,” said Ahmed Said, a leader of Egypt’s unrest. The new challenge to religious parties in the Middle East transcends sectarian lines. The protest against the Muslim Brotherhood in Sunni Egypt is matched by a similar renewal of dissent in Shiite Iran. In 2009. Iran suppressed its “Green Revolution.”

“The unlikely emblem of change in Iran is Hassan Rouhani. Part of the clerical establishment that run Iran for the past three decades, Rouhani’s election led to a nuclear breakthrough    

Iran last week of November has agreed in Geneva to curb some of its nuclear activities in return for about $7bn in sanctions relief. The deal will last for six months, while a permanent agreement is sought.

US President Barack Obama, saying it would "help prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon". Rouhani said Iran's right to uranium enrichment had been recognized. Israel, however, said the agreement was a "historic mistake" since. Iran's nuclear programme is secretly aiming at developing a nuclear bomb.

“We have no other option than moderation,” Rouhani said during the campaign. What this will mean in practice is now partly clear.  Rouhani has urged in his writings that Iran engage with the West, rather than depend on Russia and China.

Protesters have also shaken the Islamic populism of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He has been an “authoritarian rock star,” in the words of William Dobson, the author of “The Dictator’s Learning Curve.” But even Erdogan triggered a backlash after years of squeezing the Turkish media, courts and military.

This new wave of activism in the Middle East is a movement of empowered citizens who don’t want the old secular dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak’s era, nor do they and don’t want a new Islamic authoritarianism, either.

Despite these setbacks, this week showed there is still a popular movement for democratic change that resists dictation from anyone. “I have never seen anything like this, not even during February of 2011,tweeted Egyptian writer Bassem Sabry late Tuesday. “This is a genuine popular movement, no organisation whatsoever.”