Years after leaving the White House, Bill Clinton admitted that he missed his old job. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have left, but this is a democracy,” he said.

Egypt’s late president Anwar El-Sadat, in a similar moment of candor, admitted that being in power was “fun.”

Human ambitions are the same everywhere, but democracies keep them in check whereas dictatorships give them free rein.

In democratic countries, the rotation of power is conducted with the attention and precision of a surgical procedure. In the Third World, it is a bloody process involving loss of life and limb.

Compare, for instance, the manner in which Clinton ended his days in office with the tragic end of Sadat.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and Greek prime minister George Papandreou both resigned in response to public pressure. In his farewell speech, Berlusconi promised to cooperate fully with the new prime minister, Mario Monti. Papandreou also wished his successor, Lucas Papademos, the best of luck.

It is not that the two outgoing prime ministers are unusually gracious, but the two men both belong to a tradition in which power changes hands in a smooth manner.

In our part of the world, things have to turn ugly when a man is asked to step down. Saddam Hussein ended up on the rope, Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali ran away in disgrace, Hosni Mubarak is on trial, and Moammar Gadhafi was lynched. Bashar Al-Assad and Ali Abdullah Saleh seem willing to fight to the bitter end.

Why cannot our leaders step down in dignity instead of being removed in disgrace?

— Al-Ahram Weekly, Cairo, Nov. 30

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