For those who say autocrats are not sensitive to public opinion and will not peacefully accept defeat, need to look at Mexico and reconsider. On Sunday, early election results in the country showed a victory of Institutional Republican Party’s (PRI) presidential candidate Pena Nieto.

The return of the once-authoritarian party as the winner, which had peacefully bowed out from power in 2000, is actually a historic event. The PRI was the long-ruling autocrat of the 20th century and ruled Mexico for nearly 70 years.

The party ascended to power after the Mexican revolution of 1932, as basically a power-sharing arrangement between revolutionaries, landlords and local power brokers. And while the PRI allowed multi-party elections, it strongly controlled them with unfair election rules and rampant vote-buying.

But the institution lost its control over the rapidly liberalising economy and thus over its patronage system in the mid-1990s. PRI’s hegemony wavered and was pressurised by the rising opposition to reform the electoral system. In the 1994 parliamentary elections, the Peso crisis pushed voters away from the dominant party and the latter lost its hegemony in the legislature. And in 2000, the PRI peacefully accepted defeat in the presidential elections as well, which were won by the former opposition National Action Party’s (PAN) candidate Vincent Fox.

The leaders of the PRI respected the ordinary voter’s verdict and played the role of a loyal opposition for 12 years. And now the Mexican public has once again turned to the old guard and the party is expected to once again return to power. PRI’s graceful exit helped it maintain its legitimacy in the eyes of the public and enabled it to continue playing an important role in Mexico’s mainstream politics.

This is definitely a lesson for the tyrants of the Arab Spring, who refused to yield to popular will and make graceful exits like the PRI. When pressure mounted on them, instead of relenting control, they decided to fight tooth and nail to maintain their personal power. By implementing draconian measures against the masses, these despots pave a terrible end for themselves. Hosni Mubarak currently languishes in jail as a broken man, battling disease and depression. While the gory killing of Gaddafi by Libya’s rebel forces marked an awfully tragic end of a dictator who had ruled Libya for 41 years. And from the looks of the amount of blood being spilled in Syria, it doesn’t seem like Assad will have an easy escape. Syria’s dictator might not realise it but when the curtain is about to fall, it’s only fools who remain on stage.