Tunisian Voting Age Lowered. So What?

A recent law amendment lowered the legal Tunisian voting age from 20 to 18. What does that mean? Simply that 500,000 more people will be able to take part in a pointless and useless and predictable and fixed election.

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But you can't blame the Tunisian establishment from playing its role in being ever so clever in the facade that is politics in this repressed country. The news media reports as if the new pool of youth voters will actually make a difference in voting even if they all showed up. As if the party breakdown in the new parliament will be swayed by even one seat. All that will change will be the decimal number that will follow Ben Ali's declared 99% victory.

Tunisians do not have elections, they have a crafted coronation of a 22-year reigning tyrant. And the only politically active youth of consequence are those aligned with the regime who issue such Orwellian statements in praise of Ben Ali and his ostensible "pertinent policies, his clear-sighted vision, humanist initiatives and civilisational projects."

And I thought some Obama supporters were cult-like! Watching Iranian youth in recent months and their ability to stand in the face of state brutality, one cannot feel pity looking at middle-class Tunisian youth.

Don't misunderstand me: There are brave Tunisian youth who challenge the regime and undertake, say, hunger strikes in protest. But these students, as they often are, are atypical and usually from low-income families whom can easily be brushed aside.

The very Tunisian youth who could have the biggest impact on a reform movement - the middle-class and upper-class youth and their politically-connected parents - are, regrettably, indifferent toward politics (if not Ben Ali supporters). Their needs, more or less, are met through a system of privilege which values connections instead of merit. Finding employment is not hard because a family or friend can always make a call. These youth, anecdotal evidence would provide, are more concerned with impressing people with their new sunglasses and jeans than with human rights and accountability. They value a life of vapid one-upmanship and not high principle. Life is good enough - with its beaches, cafes and clubs - that youth rich enough to afford it are satisfied and politics just seems too costly.

That is sad. One cannot feel despair looking at Arab youth and their complacency toward the malaise that inflicts Arab society. The region has significant problems and the future does not look that promising. The Arab world boosts the world's highest youth unemployment (half of Tunisian graduates cannot find work within a year) and the region, according to the UN Arab Human Development Report, needs to create 51 million jobs in the next two decades or else millions of youth will face an "empty future."

It is hard to imagine how the region will met the demands of the future under the same authoritarian rubric that kills creative talent. There can be no Arab renaissance without the Arabs once again embracing a society based on criticism, open debate and tolerance. The region's often feels like it has been left behind. Tiny Israel boosts a dynamic economy which has made itself a rival of Silicon Valley and 7 universities that rank in the world's top 500. There isn't a single pioneering Arab economy, even the wealth of Dubai is based not on any entrepreneurial skills but on oil money; and 21 Arab countries and the occupied Palestinian territories between them claim only one university in the top 500 (American University of Beirut). With the exception of Lebanon, all Arab countries are in varying degrees authoritarian with a morbid press corps (Kuwait is a quasi-exception). Ben Ali is seeking yet another term, Mubarak has been in office for nearly thirty years, Qaddafi even more, the same monarchs run the Persian Gulf and Jordan, the al-Assad family still dominates Syria and the Palestinians are still under occupation. Nothing seems to change with the exception of an outbreak of wars which may have killed roughly 1,000,000 Arabs since 1990 (Algerian civil war, Gulf War, sanctions against Iraq, Israeli occupation of Palestine, Israeli wars against Lebanon, Iraq war). And the region may just be home to the world's next failed state in Yemen.

All regions have problems, but each one boosts successes as well. The Arab does not have a genuine success. There is no one country that can be claimed to be an enviable place to live. These problems should inspire Arab youth, whom suffer today under such conditions and if unchanged the future will be even more bleak; but, instead, too many prefer to chase Western fashion than do the hard work for the future.

I thought about the contrast between Arab and American youth when I attended a seminar, two in fact, earlier this summer. Not all Americans are activists and attend seminars, but a great deal of youth are invested in the future and care about their country that they take time to do the hard work to build that future.

Sadly, in all my visits to Tunisia I have never seen similar energy and concern. In ways, they can't be blame. Politics can be dangerous. But few movements are risk-free, even in the West. Arab youth could undertake peaceful protests or days of fasting in solidarity with political prisoners. In the time of blogs and Twitter, such events can be organized without regime oversight. Arab youth could encourage their parents to take part. Such peaceful protests would not needlessly endanger activists and involve the middle-class that the regime cannot simply push aside since it needs them to support it.

I don't have much hope that they will anytime soon. It begs the question: what will be the event that triggers protests? How backward does the Arab world need to be before Arab youth wake up from an existence of vapidness, of scapegoating and of finding solace in the Islamic "Golden Age" and begin to work for the future?