When Tunisians marched en masse a few weeks ago, their long-serving president fled the country. The success of the popular protests have since set off a wave of dischord across North Africa. Yemen is fast following Tunisia’s lead, while Egypt is reportedly on its last legs, parliamentarily-speaking. Shit, as they say, is going down.

These countries have of course laboured under particularly lengthy one-man regimes. Before being unceremoniously shunted from his homeland, Tunisia’s Ben Ali had ruled the country for 23 years, filling the pockets of a tightly-knit group of family and allies.

Over in Yemen, the 32-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is seriously starting to get on people’s nerves. And in Egypt, things aren’t looking any rosier for veteran President Hosni Mulbarak. This from ABC:

It’s anticipated the protests against Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule will only get bigger.

Political opposition to the president is widespread. He’s widely viewed as corrupt and maintains power with a brutal security regime.

But at the age of 82 his days in charge are numbered and he’s presently trying to install his son Gamal in the president’s chair.

Pro-democracy groups say Egypt is in the grip of a revolution; a description that the Egyptian government spokesman Hossam Zaki rejects.

Benjamin McQueen, an self-styled expert on Middle Eastern politics, offered the following insights:

The increasing deterioration of economic conditions, which I think is really the catalyst, it’s not so much a political unrest, it’s more about unemployment and food prices and these sorts of things. All of that coinciding also with the real establishment of this incredibly young, incredible large young cohort in the Arab world, the population is very much weighted to people between 15 and 30.

All of these things sort of coalescing at the same time have created quite a volatile situation in Arab countries that are poor, that a quite populous and that have quite ageing leaders and that’s a consistent thing we see across Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt and to a lesser extent, in Jordan as well.

Like sands in the hourglass, so are the days of North African autocracies.

[source: ABC]