Never underestimate the killer instincts of a class whose power and influence are under threat. They bite back, and hard. For make no mistake, with the huge margin of victory Nidaa Tounis managed to muster a few weeks ago in the legislative elections, the bite was a sizable one and subsequently any chance of fundamental social and political change have been dealt an unquantifiable blow.
In this last phase of electoral campaigning, our presidential candidates have flooded television and radio stations to present their political programs. While some have limited public communication to a discourse concerning the constitionally-imposed attributes of a president, others appeal to undecided voters with a discourse devoted to populist issues, and still others have made far-fetched promises that are well beyond their capacity to keep.
In Tunisia’s capital, days before the November 23 presidential elections, the three candidates whose faces appear most frequently across media outlets and whose names are mentioned most often in conversation are Beji Caid Essebsi, Moncef Marzouki, and Hamma Hammami.
Integral to Tunisia’s internal security operations is its cooperation with foreign governments. Partnerships with Italy, France, and the United States address national security as well as regional security issues including immigration, trafficking, and terrorism. The operations of G8 Leader countries in the MENA region are (unofficially but observably) distinctive and complementary: Italy oversees migration in the Mediterranean; France via the Ministry of the Interior focuses on national security and the police, and the United States Department of Defense is engaged in a «war on terrorism.»
Secularists defeated Islamists is the verdict most commonly reported in international news outlets; Victory and defeat are relative, Tunisian journalists estimate. The politicization of the secularist-Islamist conflict throughout the Ben Ali’s tenure and the increased occurrences of religious violence after the revolution reflect a true conflict that is by no means the defining feature of the country’s democratic transition nor the 2014 elections.
Critical observation has been of the utmost importance in this first test of democratic elections, and national and foreign observers as well as journalists and media professionals have undertaken this task, watching, documenting, and reporting on the events of the day throughout the country. The next step will be to assemble all of these notes and testimonies and results to discern whether the inconsistencies and irregularities are a few, apparently isolated or arbitrary occurrences or if they are prevalent enough to indicate otherwise.
The countdown to legislative elections has come to an end. Between massive gatherings of political parties vying for votes and campaigns that have bombarded the streets, there exists a category of Tunisians that has been little recognized by the media. Some are silent, while others call openly for a boycott of the country’s 2014 elections.
Without taking for granted the various advantages that international attention can certainly bring to this particularly precarious period in Tunisia’s history, one must nonetheless remain avidly critical and discerning of foreign actors and interests. It would appear vital not only to do a bit of background and historical research relating to institutions such as NDI, IRI, The Carter Center, the European Union, etc. etc., but also to engage with delegations to ask questions, to understand objectives and to notice what-is-being-said in correlation/contrast with what-is-being-done.
In Tunisia, public opinion has often questioned the authenticity of foreign initiatives to facilitate the country’s transition to democracy, based largely on skepticism of, for instance, the US’ silence/complicity in (a lack of truly democratic) political processes that kept Ben Ali in power for over two decades. Shortly after the President’s fled the country in January 2011, questions posed during a press conference at the US Embassy in Tunis on 21 February expressed as much; one Tunisian journalist explicitly asked, «How can we trust you?»
Ennahdha’s lack of transparency around its agreement with Burson-Mersteller gives rise to inevitable suspicion that the transaction, contrary to encouraging «free and fair elections in Tunisia» might in fact undermine them. Ambiguity around the financial aspect of the deal (“Fees and expenses to be determined at a later date,” reads the official registration document) is a particular concern after political parties’ financial mismanagement in past elections.
What Euchi demonstrates in The Disappointment of the Revolution is the falling short of an effective transitional justice process, a degredation of standards since 2011 that has witnessed the successive criminalization of former regime officials to their pardoning, to the concession of their right to engage in politics. Those who were initially seen as “enemies” of the state have gradually come to be recognized as political equals, now rivals now allies as per the momentary needs of political parties vying for electoral ground.
As much as Tunisia’s initial, post-independence, political transition was influenced by the extent and nature of economic support from the West, the success of the country’s waning post-revolution «democratic transition» is significantly impacted by the same US and EU powers. A misnomer that diminishes the scope and complexity of international alliances and enmities that it encompasses, the Arab-Israeli conflict bears greatly upon Tunisia’s relations with Western democracies, the primary prospective investors and financial backers of political transition in Tunisia for the past half century.
It is perhaps owing to the urgency of his message, the grave threats that political instability in Libya and regional terrorism pose to Tunisia’s political climate in these next three months, the potential dissipation of a democratic alliance in the MENA region, the very straightforward request for military training and equipment, and more specifically twelve Black Hawk helicopters, that Marzouki’s appeal has been so widely diffused across US and international media outlets.
What is pertinent to note is that Marzouki’s request is the precipitous disbursal of materials that the US has already promised Tunisia.
As hightened political instability in Libya threatens to permeate the region, Tunisian media and political figures are preoccupied with issues at the borders and beyond, whereas few are looking inward to the geographical, social, economic factors associated with terrorism.
The adoption of a charter signifying convergence on the ‘rules of the game,’ is precisely the sort of written agreement recommended by the International Crisis Group for continued, limited consensus that distinguishes healthy political party competition from enmity spurred by the prioritization of personal/partisan gain and power.
In Tunisia, there is a great deal of skepticism regarding the competency and «responsible governance» of the interim government in juxtaposition with Tunisia’s international image as the ‘sole democracy in the Arab world’ as citizens sense that technocrats and politicians are incapable of rising above their own political and electoral trajectories to synchronise a unified, coordinated national response to aggression that is tantamount to a Palestinian holocaust.
The interim government’s approach to addressing terrorism is a continual source of public discontentment, and heightened security issues have directly influenced citizenry’s reticence to participate in political processes, according to several La Presse and Nawaat reports. On the same day that the Ministry of National Defense reported on the Jebel Ouergha explosion, the High Independent Authority for Elections (ISIE) announced the markedly low turnout for voter registration.
Taking an inventory of reports over the past two weeks that convey the clamor and chaos of Tunisia’s party politics gearing up for elections in October, one can appreciate a newfound irony in the attribution of—and the granting of an award for—’consensus’ to the Ennahda (or, for that matter, any other political) party.
