Can the people of an entire nation identify with one street vendor to unseat a president?

On December 17, 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid, self-immolated after an incident where he was humiliated by the Tunisian government. He was a street vendor. His wares were confiscated by the local government. This was the incident that began a revolution and took down a president. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia after 23 years in power stepped down less than a month later on January 14, 2011.

How is it that a merchant who committed suicide could have that far reaching effect on a nation? 

Tunisia was basically the same as Egypt, Libya and Iraq. They all had western placed dictators that held control of the country. There was widespread poverty in most of these countries with the exception of Libya. Libya at least recognized the fact the oil sales were to benefit the people and to the extent it did there was a higher degree of comfort than most of these nations.

Iraq was claimed to be wealthy before 1980. It's oil supply was diminishing and then came the Gulf War 1 and Saddam was placed on a UN program of food for oil. The program was successful from the stand point of alleviating hunger and the need for medicine, but, it failed from the standpoint of corruption in handling the exchanges of oil for supplies into Iraq.

Now, while all this seems irrelevant there is a very important understanding to the cultural underpinnings of these dictatorships. They were widely accepted as powerful and the people were reminded often enough of the brutality they could face at a whim. 

Qaddafi's rule started in 1969. 

Mubarrak was 1981.

Saddam Hussein was 1979.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was 1989.