Tyrant gothchi in Arab countries

Na two-and-a-half years I had realised: The Netherlands is a country where people enjoy making fun of others. It is an art and a culture, especially when it comes to politics. The Dutch practice that art to show that it is never good enough, they want more and better, always.

At ‘Sunday with Lubach’ the House of Representatives elections were the main topic recently. The team of the satirical TV programme developed the Kamergotchi. Viewers could download an app, which contained 17 list leaders. You could not choose your own politician; an egg hatched and you had to wait and see who you drew. The assignment was: ‘Keep your list leader alive as long as possible by giving him food, attention or knowledge.’ ‘You never had this much political influence before,’ the explanation for the app read.

Over 750,000 people downloaded the Kamergotchi app. They wanted to be responsible for the life, or death, of their virtual puppets: the politicians. Puppets! Wow! Barely 32,000 puppets were still alive after two weeks. Almost everyone had had their list leader die.

Elsewhere in the world, politicians have the status of gods. People from Arab countries, for example, should be grateful for the miracles performed by their tyrants; they should pray for their ‘puppets’.

In ‘my’ Arab countries, the right to vote freely is not guaranteed, we do not even have the right to express our opinions on political issues or the performance of our regimes. This was and still is dangerous. You only have to look at how Arab regimes handled the ‘Arab Spring’. Millions demonstrated for democracy, regime replacement and freedom of expression. The result? Hundreds of thousands of people were arrested or killed. Millions had to flee. They dreamed of free elections, hoping to bring about democratic change. It failed and the price was high, too high.

When will we in Arab countries have a Tyrant Gothchi app, I wondered after watching ‘Sunday with Lubach’? How many lives do we have to lose before we can safely play with such an app? As in the Netherlands, when will we be able to joke about our politicians without fear?

Illustration: ©Emma Ringelding