TANIT

by Nadim Mahjoub

23 January 2011

The eruption of anger on the streets of Tunisia, bringing down the 25-year authoritarian rule of Tunisia’s President Ben Ali, is of enormous importance to the country, the Arab region and the whole world.

What’s happening is a revolutionary movement which began as a spontaneous uprising. Street protests began in December last year, when an unemployed man killed himself by self-immolation after police shut down his market stall. This spark ignited the collective anger among unemployed youth – some 40% of graduates are without work in some areas. Corruption and torture have been normal for the regime.

The protests spread from city to city, but despite dozens being killed in clashes with the police, the rebellion increased in intensity. Education ministries gave the order to suspend classes in schools and universities after new clashes broke out in several towns. Strikes in the second largest city of Sfax drew in powerful public sector unions and gained the near total support of the workers. The protesters also include university students, professors, doctors, nurses, journalists, lawyers, children, housewives, bloggers, artists and shopkeepers, and there is sympathy for them within the lower ranks of the officer caste.

In a speech on 14th January, Ben Ali said that there would be no presidency for life and announced the decrease in some prices of food. He also promised openness and freedom of the press and internet. He spoke in Tunisian Arabic for the first time, repeating the expression: “I have understood you” over and over again – but it wasn’t enough. People kept chanting: “Down with the regime!”

The flight of President Ben Ali was an enormous victory for the movement. The sight of him searching the world for a safe haven must have sent shivers throughout the Arab dictatorships. However, what followed was purely an attempt to re-arrange the old furniture.

The promise of democratic elections, replacing the Minister of the Interior, a presidential order freeing all those arrested so far – none of these manoeuvres is producing stability. The interim Government of Prime Minister Ghannouchi, which includes opposition parties, immediately suffered the resignation of four ministers.

Tunisia was a French colony until decolonisation in 1956, and France retains considerable interest in Tunisia through over 1,000 French companies. Independence did not bring the Tunisian people a say in their own destiny. The first President, Bourguiba, led a secular “liberal dictatorship” but the Ben Ali regime plagued the country with a police state run by a handful of ruling families living in obscene luxury. These families plundered their country with impunity under the protection of a repressive security apparatus that the US kindly helped to establish.

Today the economy relies heavily on tourism, which provides a cash cow to those with their hands in the till but leaves half the country underdeveloped. Tunisia may have the highest living standards in Africa and provide universal and almost free education and health treatment, but the world economic crisis exposed all that is rotten. With slower economic growth, the internal social contradictions came to an explosive head. In the last two years, European export markets declined, food prices rose, and life for the swelling ranks of the young unemployed became unbearable.

The leadership of the military fear that their forces are unreliable instruments of repression. The army is based on universal conscription, including women, and in recent protests the armed forces proved susceptible to fraternisation. In addition, police wages are low and endemic corruption makes these forces unstable. Most importantly, the army in Tunisia does not have a history of intervention in political matters.

A very positive development for those of us who see the workers’ movement as the key to fundamental change is that thousands responded to the General Union call for a general strike. The General Union of Labour has been the “right hand” of the regime in keeping the peace, but it has now “joined” the movement because of the pressure independent unionists exercised upon its bureaucracy. A few months before the uprising, a coalition of left wing anti-bureaucracy unionists had been formed, supported by the Union of Elementary and Secondary Education and other unions such as the Postal and Telegraph Union.

It is impossible to predict developments at this stage. As I write, people in their thousands are still marching, demanding the ruling party be dismantled and the Minister of the Interior be subjected to a people’s trial.

• For more information, contact http://www.tunisiasolidarity.org
• first published Labour Briefing (UK) http://www.labourbriefing.org.uk