I've never conspired to overthrow the government; all I did was report on the Arab Spring and suggest that something similar might happen in Ethiopia if the authoritarian regime didn't reform.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The uprising in Egypt was initiated by the young generation. The uprising achieved two things. One is it made the lives of dictators impossible. Today, if you are looking for a safe job, don't become a dictator.
I am not worried that the Egyptians will suddenly invade Ethiopia. Nobody who has tried that has lived to tell the story.
And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.
The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.
I don't believe in regime change, certainly not in the Middle East.
Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government.
In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn.
When we overthrew Mubarak, we did this in 18 days. And because we were very naive and very unexperienced in revolutions, we thought that that was it. It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days. So we were very naive.
A rebellion is not a revolution. It may ultimately lead to that end.
The revolutions of the Arab Spring happened because people realized they were the power.
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