A League of Arab Democracies

Regionally, the hearts of most Arabs pounded for the courage of the Libyan people. Now the League of Arab States has a rare opportunity to reconstruct into a League of Arab Democracies. Not long ago the Saudis invited the Jordanians and the Moroccans to join the Gulf Co-operation Council. It is still not clear what motivated such a move, other than monarchical affinity.The moment right now favours democratic synergy. Nabil Al-Arabi, the Arab League chief, should be inspired by the Libyan people's coming victory to restructure the organisation he presides over, even if he creates a second chamber for the purpose of the greater sake of co-operation among the Arab world's new democracies.Libyans did not begin the Arab revolution. However, they are about to close one link in the Arab revolutionary chain: three neighbouring countries with a total population of 100m Arabic-speaking people, covering a surface area of more than 3m square kilometres, are free. That is how it must have felt when the colonists left Algeria to join Morocco or Tunisia, or when the free officers came, one by one, to ditch monarchical rule in several Arab states.The three countries should experiment with open borders and the free movement of people, goods, and ideas to show that the dawn of Arab democracies will not have any semblance to the era of Gaddafi, Mubarak and Ben Ali. Mr Al-Arabi has a golden opportunity to make this a reality. Just as Arab youth are steadfast in the struggle for freedom and democracy, their elder statesmen should meet them halfway in helping reconstruct a better Arab world.