Monday, November 28, 2011

Bahrain update

Angry Arab's chief Bahrain correspondent responds to my post on Bahrain at Al-Akhbar English:  "I read your blogpost on alakhbar. I disagree. The secular opposition is even a bigger failure than alwefaq. Alminbar aldimoqrati flip flops and changes their position everyday. One day they are more progovernment other days they are more anti. It just depends on who is stronger. Their positions are so weak and confusing that some people wonder if they shold even be considered as part of the opposition. It pains me to say this about them because I really like them. The only explanation anyone I know can come up with is that they are really scared. But if your scared why be an opposition society in the first place? They are so weak in fact that a lot of their younger members now openly support what alwefaq says.

Waad is much better but after ebrahim sharifs imprisonment they refuse to take a leadership role. Instead they just follow what alwefaq does. You get the sense that alwefaq comes up with the policies and waad just signs off. Their worst performance was when they apologized to the government for their disloyalty. Of course I don't blame them. They were under a lot of pressure and that's why I forgive them for flipfloping during a certain period of time. I really like waad still because I am closest to them in my thinking than any other group but I am angry at them for not leading. Fadhel abbas from tamajou3 is good in some respects but they are a tiny opposition society.

Also if you think alwefaq is being too deferential to the americans you should see what waad and alminbar say.

If you are talking about feb14 then I wouldn't consider them leftist. They are secular in that they r not calling for a religious state but they are definitely not leftists. Neither are the people of Bahrain Freedom Movement which are based in London. The only other group there is the Bahrain Center for Human Rights which is not an opposition group but has kind of become like one."  

PS I told her that I was talking about a new secular movement and not about the existing groups.