Daily Times

After the Arab Spring came the ‘Panama Spring’. The Arab Spring came, shocked, whimpered and faded. The present Panama Spring is being termed as another seasonal wind that will ‘appear’ to be creating a storm but will turn into a lull before the summer takes on. The premise behind this cynicism is that both are targeted towards the rich and the powerful who may lose a few billions but will create new power fortresses to prevent any further disturbance. The excitement that was created with the Arab Spring and the romance that was conjured up by the oppressed against the mighty is not really present in this shake-up. However, as with every fairy tale, reality bites, and the Arab Spring sprung no major surprises; Panama Spring despite being the boring accountants, tedious, number-crunching leakage may yet create enough material for Hollywood to make many movies on this gigantic paper chase.

The Arab Spring was a revolt of the suppressed public against oppression, and Panama Spring is a revolt of the honest against corruption. Arab Spring started in Tunisia in 2010 when the self-immolation of a street vendor in a provincial town of Sidi Bouzid sparked mass anti-government protests. Unable to control the crowds, the then president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country in January 2011 after 23 years in power. Over the next few months, Ben Ali’s downfall inspired similar uprisings across the Middle East. The story of Arab Spring reached its height in Egypt when the Tahrir Square became a historical place to witness the power of the people in dislodging unwanted governments. While Hosni Mubarak succumbed to the pressure, the political structure was too weak to let the democratic government last, giving way to the army to run the country. Libya and Muammar Qaddafi went into a bloody war, despite Qaddafi’s death Libya remained a land in the grip of a civil war. Aside from these big falls, some other countries were also affected by the shake-up but that only resulted in partial public appeasement in the form of some benefits and reforms. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Qatar also faced sporadic protests but managed to control the population with carrot-and-stick options.

Panama Spring is similar yet different from the Arab Spring. It is similar in the fact that it is a revolt against the ruling elite; it is similar in the fact that public protests and pressure are the trigger points for many governments; and it is similar in the fact that the IT and social media revolution has played a big part in making it spread in many parts of the world. However, it is different in the sense that this is not a regional uprising located in the Middle East but touching nearly every part of the world. From Argentina to Iceland, from the UK to Russia, and from India to Pakistan, the tremors have been felt everywhere. Another difference is that unlike the Arab Spring that was basically a revolt against authoritarian governments suppressing the rights of citizens, this is a revolt against mostly democratic governments not taking into confidence their citizens on private business matters. The Panama leaks are not merely limited to governments but also include businessmen, bureaucrats, judges, media-persons, sportspersons, actors and many other individuals.

The Arab Spring saw the start of the role of social media in informing the world, and the Panama Spring is already showing the power of social media in transforming the world. While in Tunisia the self-immolation of a street vendor inspired a youth to sing a song on freedom that went viral and started a national movement. In Egypt when Mubarak clamped control on the electronic media, it was Wael Ghonim, Google’s marketing executive, whose post “We are all Khalid Mohammad Said” on his Facebook page about the man who was tortured to death by the government who made the uprising turn into
a revolution.

From spring of 2010 to spring of 2016 social media has overtaken media, and is now no longer an alternative but a mainstream vehicle that unlike the electronic media is the voice of the poor as it gives opportunity across classes, countries, age groups and segments to say, show and respond to millions of people within seconds. In the Arab Spring the main tool was Facebook; in the Panama Spring the ability of IT wizards to hack millions of documents and then in a click spread them all over the world through Twitter, Instagram, Snapchats etc is unprecedented. The Panama leaks would have never leaked with such speed, alacrity and scale had the social media not made the world so instant, virtual and global. The Wiki Leaks that shook the world were 1.73 gigabytes, and Panama leaks are 2,000 times bigger with 2.6 terabytes, covering 11.5 million papers. A decade ago, it would have taken warehouses and trucks to compile and transport the data in months to reach major countries. Today, it has just taken a few minutes to reach four corners of the world.

The question then is will the Panama Spring create more waves than the Arab Spring did? The answer is it has already created ripples, but will it really create tectonic shakeups remains to be seen. The ripples it has created are not just due to social media. It has happened because people being exposed in these leaks are from all parts of the world, especially the more developed world. The Iceland prime minister was the first to go as the public of Iceland is educated and knows how to hold leaders accountable. However, the more authoritarian regimes are more reluctant like China and Russia. Pakistan is a case of pretence democracy where all institutions seem to be serving and protecting the prime minister’s office rather than the public, and cries of moral authority are just laughed away. Thus, the ultimate game changer is the public awareness and pressure. Countries where the public is empowered, they exhibit the power to disempower the people in power. In countries where monarchies, closed governments and counterfeit democracies exist, scams on the rich and powerful fade into insignificance over a period of time.

The Arab Spring had a predictable fallout but the Panama Spring is diverse and unpredictable, and in this unpredictability lies the opportunity — the opportunity to create hope in despair and the opportunity to disempower
the powerful.

The writer is a columnist and analyst and can be reached at andleeb.abbas1@gmail.com