Last week, former President Hosni Mubarak and his two sons were placed under investigation - sending his sons to Tora Farm prison and Mubarak under house (or hospital) arrest. The president many have and continue to compare to a pharaoh, flew a little too close to the sun and had his royal wings burnt off.
Why is this news significant?
Many overthrown dictators arrange for a refuge before stepping down from power. Most flee to some country willing to take them on as honored house guests.
Mubarak - whether from hubris or stupidity - decided to remain inside Egypt at his seaside palace in Sharm El-Sheikh.
He might have thought that his people in the army would forestall any legitimate investigation of his and his families misdeeds. He may have thought that he was bigger than any laws on paper or even any unwritten but expected ethical code of presidential conduct. For example, don't steal from your people. Or, try to help the poor not be poor.
His sons, with their Western educations, may have simply thought they had played the game so well that they knew all the rules. Or even that they had invented the game itself.
But, as most fairy tales go, the villain forgets his weakness and the hero is able to triumphantly slay the dragon and win the girl. Of course, the girl in this analogy I suppose is democracy. Or freedom.
The Mubarak's weakness was their inability to grasp that the unemployment they had caused through years of corruption and stealing of Egypt's economy, the growing separation between the rich and the poor, and the inability of so many to better themselves or provide for their families, had pushed Egyptians to their tipping point. Tunisia provided the spark, but the Mubarak's and their regime of cronies had already built up an impressive amount of fuel for the fire.
Mubarak and his sons being investigated for all of their to-long-to-list number of crimes sends a message to all world dictators: your populations can hold you accountable for your actions. For too long countries around the world (cough cough Saudi Arabia) have welcomed former dictators and offered them refuge.
This should not be the case. Hopefully this investigation will put the Mubarak's and many of those who benefited from them behind bars. And hopefully it will start a precedent of not allowing fallen leaders to flee the wrath of those they have scorned.
The questioning of Mubarak and his family is significant for Egypt because it allows Egyptians to have justice for the past 30 years of oppression. For the world, it will be an example of how to depose and expose a dictator.
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