Posts Tagged ‘General Pinochet’
The Wall Street Journal thinks Egypt needs a General Pinochet
THE Wall Street Journal thinks Egypt needs a General Pinochet
And this has predictably outraged just about everyone else:
Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, who took over power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.
What’s wrong with that of course is that Pinochet overthrew a democtratically elected President (Allende), tortued and murdered and then, when age caught up with him, brought back that democracy. Sorta.
What’s right with it is something more subtle and well expressed by Fraser Nelson here:
All this has been established by Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist who travelled to Egypt to investigate the causes of the Arab Spring. His team of researchers found that Bouazizi had inspired 60 similar cases of self-immolation, including five in Egypt, almost all of which had been overlooked by the press. The narrative of a 1989-style revolution in hope of regime change seemed so compelling to foreigners that there was little appetite for further explanation. But de Soto’s team tracked down those who survived their suicide attempts, and the bereaved families. Time and again, they found the same story: this was a protest for the basic freedom to own and acquire ras el mel, or capital.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 8th, July 2013 | In: Money, Politicians | Comments (2)