Tunisian officials must be scratching their heads at the moment. After decades of a sluggish political apathy, the country has witnessed a couple of governments in a few weeks. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannoushi’s resignation is edifying. Foremost among the lessons learned is that public pressure and private suasion eventually pay off.
Dictatorship, Tunisia’s undeserved fate
At a press conference on May 4, Naji Bghouri, the head of the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), was prevented by pro-government journalists from finishing comments in which he mentioned of declining press freedoms in Tunisia. The episode showed that the regime of President Zine al-Abedine ben Ali had lost patience even with a body that it had helped establish in January 2008 to cut the grass out from under the feet of the country’s most critical journalists.
Use the information summit to pressure the Tunisian authorities
The choice of Tunisia to host the November 16-18 second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has provoked much controversy. The idea behind the summit is to bridge the gap between rich and poor countries in a field that has proven to be one of the focal points of present and future progress. Tunisia, however, excels neither in informatics and rel […].