Opinion Tunisian dominoes?

I breezed from the airport to downtown in 10 minutes. Tanks stood at the entrance to Boulevard Bourguiba (known wistfully as the Champs-Élysées of Tunis) where several hundred protesters had gathered to hurl abuse at the deposed dictator’s party — the neither constitutional nor democratic Constitutional Democratic Rally party — and tell this misnomer to get the heck out of government.

Two high school teachers spoke to me,and their message was identical: the thieves must go,blood had not been shed only for some of the same ministers to endure. A chant rose,using the French acronym for the hated party,“We’ll accept bread and water but never the RCD!”

The atmosphere was relaxed,with baton-wielding police looking on from a distance,but political tensions are sharp. The frayed interim authorities,headed by a holdover,Mohamed Ghannouchi,are scrambling for credibility,promising a “clean break”. Police have shown new restraint,curfew has been pushed back and the press operates unshackled as Ghannouchi’s crew engage in the usual post-revolutionary rush to don new clothes.

Unseemly,perhaps,but a lot is at stake. If Tunisia can become the Arab world’s Turkey,a functioning democracy where Islamism is part of the electoral mosaic rather than a threat to it,the tired refrain of all the Arab despots that they are the only bulwark against the jihadists will be seen for the self-serving lie it has become.

No wonder Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has lost it,raving about Bolshevik and American revolutions in the streets of Tunis. No wonder anxiety is high in Egypt,where the distinguished Nobelist and potential game-changer,Mohamed ElBaradei,tweeted on the lesson of Tunisia: “Regime in Egypt must understand that peaceful change is only way out.”

I can’t see President Mubarak,who’s headed that regime for three decades,facing less than upheaval if he tries to hand power to his son,Gamal,in the current environment. There’s more than a touch of “We’re all Tunisians now” among misruled Arabs right now. They’re talking Tunisian domino effect.

That’s cause for Tunisia to take great care to get this right. Sure,it’s tempting to go with the baying crowd: off with all their heads! But Iraq showed the dangers of overnight dismantlement of a system — party,security forces and all. The people affected don’t disappear; they nurse vengeance. And Tunisia,like Saddam’s Iraq,if with milder veneer,was a police state under Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali,as subtly ferocious as Syria.

So I’d bear with Ghannouchi so long as his government works for rapid presidential and then legislative elections. As Slim Amamou,a former dissident blogger released from jail a week ago and now youth minister,put it: “Not everybody can be a novice in politics in government like me.”

That’s right: chaos cannot prepare a credible vote. This is a nation where the most significant legal opposition,the Progressive Democratic Party,boasts 1,000 members. Ahmed Bouazzi,a member of its executive committee,said,“We are walking on eggs”: the interior minister has blood on his hands,the defence minister once did sweet deals for the former first lady,the PDP underplayed its hand in joining the government with a single minister — for regional economic development. Should the party now push for more?

Through an open window a shout came up accusing the PDP of selling out. “That’s good — free speech!” said a party member. There are going to have to be painful trade-offs if Tunisia is to demonstrate — finally — that nothing in the Arab genome means one dictator must follow another.

Tunisia has a lot going for it in this quest: high education,emancipated women,manageable size,and an Islamist movement that Michael Willis,a North Africa expert at St Antony’s College,Oxford,described as “perhaps the mildest and most pragmatic around.” Their exiled leader,Rached Ghannouchi,has been multiplying conciliatory statements. A democratic Tunisia can do the Turkish thing.

There will,in coming weeks,be agents provocateurs bent on the worst,and the usual Muslim-hating naysayers. Arab democracy is threatening to a host of vested interests and glib clichés. It is also the only way out of the

radicalizing impasse of Arab klepto-gerontocracies and,as such,a vital American interest.ROGER COHEN