Enough Change

My point when writing this is to share my concern about what is happening in the world, today the 1^st of February 2001. But before that allow me say to one other thing:

God bless CNN!

I haven’t been this excited about watching the news since 1991, and I missed this feeling! I remember as a kid trying to understand what was going on and watching all those brown tanks rolling around in Kuwait and the night shots of green thingies flying across the skies of Baghdad. That was fun then! Now I’m back at following the news via CNN - Hala Gorani is the new Amanpour – and reading the news obsessively to know the latest developments. My take here is not to address the political dimension of what is happening in the Middle East, but more to share with you my general views on the events of the past weeks.

I am amazed about the power of the people. There is something genuinely gratifying in seeing people risking more than their lives for the common good. Maybe it is the communist in me speaking, but I feel touched when I see on TV all those people demonstrating on the streets, risking being jailed or even killed. They could stay home, they could protect their possessions, but they feel in them the need of being part of what is happening, they feel it is their role and mission to be together with others and to fight together. When individuals become a group of people who speak at the same voice and move as one, there is no possible way of ignoring it. I remember watching people who got stuck behind the Iron Curtain for decades saying ENOUGH, I saw the Timorese people coming to the streets to say ENOUGH. And they won because they were right.

Now, I don’t know what will happen next in the Middle East. I just saw Mubarak saying he won’t run in the next elections but I doubt that will be enough to send one million Egyptians back home. Ben Ali left Tunes and to be honest I don’t know how long it will take until the Tunisians have their requests properly addressed. All I know is that I feel the winds of change blowing. Today there were reports that people were taking the streets of Damascus and Amman asking for change. People in Yemen and Sudan are also together in saying ENOUGH.

This brings me to my point. My concern is how much information can we process and deal with? How much change can we support and relate to until we lose interest and focus on the latest football transfers? I fear that we lose track of what is happening and let some of the much-needed change fall short of its purposes. I haven’t heard anything in the news about Sierra Leone. As far as I know Gbagbo is still playing President there, resisting the popular will and the UN´s call for him to step down. I haven’t heard anything about the results of the South Sudan referendum where 99% of the people chose to start their own new country. For the past days I haven’t heard anything about the new government in Tunisia and their plans to bring stability and progress to the country. And what about Haiti, Afghanistan or Burma?... It seems we can only deal with one crisis at a time and as soon as a new crisis unfolds, we move along and send all the reporters there to cover the fresh news.

I understand that it is impossible to keep people informed about all that is happening in the World at a given time. But if we are serious at supporting these popular movements of change, we have to be able to remember all those who risk all they have for the greater good. If we believe in change, we have to be able to maintain the focus on the places where people are struggling to keep the winds of change blowing strong. Whenever and wherever people ask for change and say ENOUGH, we need to be able to remember them with more than organized marches in our capitals. It is also up to us to read the news and be informed about the next episodes of these revolutions rather than being satisfied at watching only the pilot episode. Change does not happen from one day to another and I can only hope that we (myself included) can understand this and keep an eye open on what is now old news.


ANC, Brussels, 01/02/2011