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In a remarkable shift, the police, previously the enforcers of Mr. Ben Ali’s rule, organized a protest of their own on the city’s central artery, Bourguiba Boulevard. They wore red armbands in solidarity with the revolution, complained that Mr. Ben Ali and his family had put cronies in charge of the security forces and demanded a trade union that could negotiate for higher wages. Tunisians were stunned to see police officers, once silent and terrifying, complaining about their working conditions in interviews with Al Jazeera.

“The most rapid revolution in history,” he wrote. “Because we are connected. Synchronized.”

"I am with you. We are not going to shoot you. What matters is that the rally is peaceful," an army captain promised the crowd, who reacted with applause.

"As the people of Tunisia chart a different future, political and social stability are essential ingredients for credible elections," Philip Crowley, the state department spokesman, said on the microblogging site Twitter.

Tunisia may be significant because it is one of a cluster of countries that combine elitist regimes with rapid population growth and economic stagnation. This shared experience helps explain the emergence of further unrest across the region - and state attempts to prevent, deflect, and mollify it.  In this delicate moment, most governments may calculate that - even though divisions will likely widen further in the next decade - they can maintain control.Where this assessment begins to come apart is that the world community is facing not just a dangerous socio-economic divide, but profound environmental constraints as well. The most potent of these is climate change, though the impact of peak oil may not be far behind.

He said France was so close to Tunisia that it had been unable to stand back and see the situation clearly. "Behind the emancipation of women, the drive for education and training, the economic dynamism, the emergence of a middle class, there was a despair, a suffering, a sense of suffocation. We have to recognise that we underestimated it," Sarkozy said.

A former colonial power should never "make judgments" on the internal workings of countries that once made up its empire

without extreme vigilance on the part of the Tunisian public, the country might find itself, a few months from now, with another RCD president and a parliament still dominated by Ben Ali's party. Tunisians are going to have to remain very watchful, and keep up the pressure for change.

Tunisia basically has a choice ahead: whether to continue as the IMF’s, the World Bank’s and Europe’s alleged best pupil in the Arab classroom, with the mixed resultsthat are plain for everyone to see, or to decide for itself, according to its own interests and sovereign decisions, what path and what policies to adopt, whether it be in the foreign policy, domestic policy or economic policy fields. Tunisia can chose to be like Turkey, Brazil, India or Malaysia, or it can pursue in its post-colonial striving for acceptance and the occasional pat on the head by its Western partners, a path followed by Jordan or Morocco with limited success.

For all practical purposes, this is the kind of government that Benali could have appointed himself had he had more brains – his last speech actually outlined exactly this sort of government, and he actually met with some opposition members before being deposed.

The Tunisian people have ousted the dictator, but they haven’t yet got rid of his institutional and political legacy. This is just the beginning, if democracy is to take hold.