Politics Samih Beji Okkez 25 February 2019

Marouen Mabrouk, a story of impunity after the revolution

As per the official request of prime minister Youssef Chahed, the name of Marouen Mabrouk was removed from the list of 48 Tunisians sanctioned by the European Union for misappropriation of state funds. Unlike other friends and relatives of deposed president Ben Ali who saw their money frozen by the EU, Mabrouk was able to find himself a new political shield to protect his wealth following the revolution that swept the country in 2011. With help from telecommunications company Orange France, he managed to get Tunisia’s prime minister to unfreeze over seven million euros in assets held in EU countries.

Blogs Hedi Yahmed 20 February 2019

SNJT, a model for export to the Arab world?

“The answer is Tunisia.” That’s what Egyptians say when they talk about a solution to their political crisis and their hopes for democracy at home. It is not only about the possibility of exporting the so-called Tunisian political exception to the Arab region. It also expresses a desire to tap into the dynamism of the professional syndicates, trade unions, and civil society organizations that make up the political landscape in Tunisia and have come to exercise the power of oversight and consultation with the authorities. The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (Syndicat National des Journalistes Tunisiens, or SNJT) is one of these professional syndicates with growing weight and influence.

Politics Thameur Mekki 18 February 2019

Investigation: UPS Tunisia to the rescue of Nidaa Tounes

Having endured multiple scissions since coming to power at the end of 2014, Nidaa Tounes is all but in pieces. Today, the party is trying to mend its wounds by absorbing the Free Patriotic Union (UPL) and, seven years after its creation, organizing its first elective congress. To this end, a na-tional conference of regional coordinators was held in Mahdia over the weekend of December 21-23, 2018. The event is telling about the banalization of murky relations between the business world and Nidaa Tounes, whose own treasurer is playing the role of party financer.

Politics Malek Lakhal 04 February 2019

Revolution in the Time of Neoliberalism, an interview with Asef Bayat

Author of “Life as Politics : How ordinary people change the Middle East” (2009), Asef Bayat is a sociology professor at the University of Illinois. His latest book “Revolutions without Revolutionnaries” (2017), questions the revolutionnary nature of the Arab Revolutions. He was invited by the Forum Tunisien des Droits Economiques et Sociaux (FTDES) to discuss the possibility of a revolution in a neoliberal context during a conference last month in Tunis. Nawaat met with Bayat to discuss the future of revolutions in a world taken hostage by a dying neoliberal order.

Politics Hammadi Lassoued 31 January 2019

Youth protest campaigns: Shifting stakes, ambiguous party relations

Over the past month, Tunisia’s streets have provided the setting for a number of social movements marked by the new campaign slogan Basta (« enough »). The emergence of this campaign has raised a number of questions around the effectiveness of this form of struggle in achieving its demands and independence from political parties, especially in terms of its ability to preserve a horizontalist organization. Questions frequently raised in the context of youth protest campaigns that have been carried out in Tunisia over the past several years (Fech Nestannew, Manich Msameh, Tamarrod).

Rights Hammadi Lassoued 10 January 2019

Eric, Ivorian and illegal in Tunisia

On December 23, 2018, Falikou Coulibaly, president of the Association of Ivorians in Tunisia, was killed during a robbery in Soukra (Greater Tunis). As protests led by the Subsaharian community multiplied across the capital, Nawaat met Eric. Settled in Tunisia since March 2017, the 31 year old Ivorian—like hundreds of his compatriots, has found himself uncapable of regularizing his status. Forced to relinquish his studies, Eric got a job as a construction worker. Racist acts of aggression, a lack of medical care and an exploitative work situation are some of the challenges he faces on a daily basis.

Economy Samih Beji Okkez 02 January 2019

Finance law 2019: exacerbating debt, perpetuating fiscal injustice

Another hot summer in Tunisia gave way to teachers’ strikes in the fall, while winter follows suit with plans for a general strike on January 17. In this context, on December 10 the government adopted the Finance Law of 2019, a package of measures that perpetuate fiscal injustice, aiming to handle the country’s growing deficit by reaching into the pockets of those most impacted by economic crisis. Ahead of the 2019 elections, the new public budget was passed amidst a rejection rate of 30% in parliament, suscitating a new wave of popular and political rejection in the most recent test put to the government of prime minister Youssef Chahed.

World Vanessa Szakal 26 November 2018

Interview: Tunisian physicist Nour Raouafi, on NASA’s mission to reach the Sun

Over the past month, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been breaking space records left and right. On October 29, PSP became the closest and fastest human-made object orbiting the Sun, while October 31 marked its first solar « encounter ». In light of these events, Nawaat speaks with the Project Scientist of the NASA mission to reach our solar system’s star, the Sun. Nour Raouafi, Tunisian solar physicist at John Hopkins University Applied Sciences Lab which built the PSP spacecraft, describes the early phase of this seven-year journey into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, and also talks about his own trajectory to working on this stellar mission.

Economy Maye Kabil 22 November 2018

Egypt : The Losers of Liberalisation

In recent years, Egyptians have experienced a noticeable decline in their standard of living with the devaluation of the national currency and at the same time a substantial rise in the cost of goods and services. Something quite unusual in a country where over the past few decades changes have always been gradual. Egyptians interpret their difficulties as a consequence of the implementation of the “Economic reform” aimed at bringing the country out of the current crisis with a series of austerity measures decided by the IMF.

Economy Marie-José Daoud 22 November 2018

The impossible reform of the Lebanese financial system

In recent months, Lebanon has been alive with rumours about a forthcoming devaluation. In mid-September, the governor of the Central Bank, Riadh Salameh was obliged to officially deny that he was ill and had to resign and Michel Aoun, the President of the Republic, also had to declare that the Lebanese pound was in good health and that the country was not on the road to bankruptcy. For every Lebanese these factors are indeed closely related since all know that the country is deep in debt.

Economy Doa Ali 22 November 2018

Jordan, its Debt and the Mirages of the IMF

The demonstrations in the summer of 2018 put the economic policies pursued since the late 1980s back at the heart of public debate in Jordan. The dispute has opened up a political space that had disappeared since the failure of the “November” 2012 conflagration, and brought the issue of taxation back to the forefront of the discussions. Extending the debate to the global economic approach has at least made it possible to question several central points of the official discourse, in particular the recurring subject of debt reduction.

Economy Majd Kayyal 22 November 2018

Palestine : “Good governance” to bury the Intifada

The second Intifada used a large network of parallel and informal financial assistance to provide material and logistical support to the Palestinian resistance. That is why Israel has imposed reforms on the Palestinian Authority that have played a decisive role in its control strategy. Presented as a step towards good governance and the fight against corruption, they contributed to the halt given to the Intifada after the death of Yasser Arafat.

Economy Yassin Swehat 21 November 2018

Syria and Egypt: Surprising analogies

Despite the supposedly opposing political systems in place in Egypt and Syria since the 1970s, the two countries have developed similar economic reforms, particularly since the 1990s. In both cases, and beyond the differences, they allowed the elites to strengthen themselves, and the dictatorship to continue.

Economy Malek Lakhal 14 November 2018

Tunisia and its debt: our invasive friends, the creditors

In November 2016, Tunis hosted an international conference, Tunisia 2020. Co-organised by the Tunisian, French and Qatari governments, its ambition was to garner from the “friendly countries” in attendance investment pledges for projects contributing to growth and job creation as well as significant financial support. The problem is that the promised financial support appears never to have been forthcoming, and the Tunisian government has been obliged to go into debt on the financial markets. This situation has prompted several observers to wonder publicly: “Where are Tunisia’s friends?”