Aljazeera OpEd: Libya: Security versus democracy
Whenever a bomb explodes in Libya, so do the arguments amongst those who profess to be the guardians of democracy despite their differing discourses on what constitutes security. It then becomes a chicken-egg dialogue: what should come first, security or democracy? Or are they, as many argue, the two sides of the same coin?
I am biased. Democracy precedes all other imperatives. The Arab World prior to the Arab Spring diced with security first, democracy later. So, on this ground alone, it makes no sense today in the midst of the Arab Spring moment to regurgitate and stress the primacy of security.
Even if the transformation is slow, North Africa has embraced change, and so new ideas, new language and new ethics are needed. Like democracy, security itself cannot be recycled in the same monotone of the hyper-realists of the 1990s and 2000s, readily packaged as "one size fits all". Nuance is often missing. The context is not sufficiently appreciated. And this complicates the career of both security and democracy in the Arab region.
In the old days, when development and modernisation gurus had buoyancy, the reigning wisdom was that order (security) is prioritised over freedom (democracy). However, the new mantra of the moment is democracy-building first, which makes sense today in the context of the Arab Spring, a moment heralded by rebellious publics to engender freedom and its most important associate - dignity - in the minds of Egyptians, Tunisians and Libyans. Through it, institution-building and construction of the legal foundations of the state, and the design of the cake of values, the glue that keeps polity and society united around shared vision and aspirations. This is challenging.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/20135284233380962.html
Freedom (democracy) vs. security (order) - questions that we still ask ourselves in the West.
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