BEIRUT: The Arab Spring is the anti-government protests nearly is a decade old and sinking. Last year the protests in four new countries unveiled that the spirit of the revolts that lit up 2011 is still alive. Asef Bayat, an expert on revolutions in the Arab world in a statement said: " The emergence of the 2019 wave of the uprisings in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq showed that the Arab Spring did not die. It continued in other countries in the region with somewhat similar repertoires of collective action."
Earlier, in the year 2011, the countries mopped by the latest revolts had initially stood on the sidelines as a contagion of uprisings gripped Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya and Yemen. But to the past year, they led calls for an end to the same regional economic precariousness, corruption, and unresponsive governance that fuelled the Arab protests years earlier. On February 22 last year, fear gave way to anger as President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's planned to run for a fifth term after 20 years in power prompted demonstrations in key cities. This year in March the Hirak suspended demonstrations because of the pandemic and to obey social distancing required by the coronavirus. The coronavirus pandemic and the violent repression that killed nearly 600 demonstrators have all but snuffed out the movement.
Earlier in 2011 February, a jobless Bazzi started organising the first series of protests inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt but which paled in comparison. It culminated in October 2019, when a government decision to tax WhatsApp calls sparked an unusual nationwide movement demanding the wholesale removal of the ruling elite. The movement took aim at the entire political class, forcing the government of then-prime minister Saad Hariri to bow to street pressure. But, for Bazzi, the episode marked the third chapter of a revolutionary process that started in 2011 and continues to this day.
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