In light of the implication of the Tunisian Ministry of Industry, Energy, and Mines and the Tunisian National Oil Company in the mismanagement of natural resources, the notorious association of oil companies worldwide for politicization and economic corruption, and the immensity of intended exploration and production activities in the south of the country, the Gazoduc-Nawara project demands public attention.
The aptness of the SelfiePoubella campaign is largely in the irony of its approach, in its twisting of the conventionally individualistic focus of the Selfie in general and especially in the context of the Minister of Tourism’s fetish for self-portraits that have propagated and diffused across the media landscape with as much efficiency as the garbage that has cluttered the Tunisian landscape.
Two recent articles from The International Business Times (New York) and Index on Censorship (a London-based organization that works to «protect freedom of expression around the world») resonate with the skepticism in publications from Tunisian media outlets and pose questions pertinent to national controversies that embody the challenges of post-revolution social and political transition.
Lawyers, academics, politicians, civil society, more than one-hundred fifty organizations, Tunisians and internationals were part of the movement to FreeAzyz Amami and Sabri Ben Mlouka: democratic transition demands that the misuse of judicial power inherent in police state be replaced by the precedence of an independent justice.
In a rather low-key, overlooked way, the Tunisian Minister of Culture, Mourad Sakli, has announced yesterday on a radio program on Jawhara FM that the ministry plans on privatizing Tunisian heritage sites. The plan is to have private companies lease the sites for periods of 25 to 30 years.
That the Mesh Sayada case study has been presented in the context of US surveillance operatives is relevant to one discussion but is meanwhile a superficial and imprecise presentation of the project for citizens who participated in its development and to whom it belongs. The mesh network was not brought to Sayada; it was built in Sayada as a locally-devised, collaboratively-implemented initiative to promote Open Source and Open Data principles.
Citizens, politicians, analysts, and union members expecting concrete decisions and well-elaborated intitiatives in Jomâa’s press conference last Wednesday felt either marked disappointment or resignation to the Prime Minister’s consistently long-winded and half-hearted commitments to real reform.
Thirty-one year old blogger and activist Aziz Amami was arrested yesterday, May 12, 2014 in La Goulette, a beachside neighborhood of the capital. Some time between ten and eleven o’clock Monday night, Amami and his friend, photographer Sabri Ben Mlouka, were purportedly pulled over and detained for the possession and consumption of marijuana.
If its delivery is distinctive, the overwhelming message from public figures and ordinary citizens is the same: the gravity of the economic crisis—whether the exacerbated image of a political media campaign or an accurate portrayal of the country’s disequilibrium— is such that the Prime Minister has been called upon to transcend the drawn-out bickering of a politicized National Economic Dialogue, to take actions in measure with the severity of the situation that he has expounded in his discourse and communication with Tunisia and the international community, to devise a roadmap that sets out long-term, sweeping structural reforms.
In spite of being a national heritage site in plain view of the shores of Berges du Lac in Tunisia’s capital, the islet has never been officially open to Tunisians. Needless to say it is newsworthy—though curiously not in Tunisian media—that the recent completion of a study signals the imminent opening of the forgotten island to the public.
As ANC deputies finalized the electoral law at Parliament chambers in Bardo, citizens filled capital streets with their presence, carrying posters and flags, chanting and singing the national anthem in honor of the international Labor Day holiday.
ARTICLE 19, BBC Media Action, Community Media Solutions (CMS), The Euro -Mediterranean Foundation for Support to Human Rights Defenders (EMHRN), […]
What does foreign media make of the Ministry of Tourism’s recent decision to regulate the entry of Jews carrying Israel passports into the country? How will a national debate that encompasses questions of ethnicity, religion, secularism, history, and international relations influence potential tourists to Tunisia? For better or worse, the Djerba controversy and Karboulmania that have overcome Tunisia have yet to titillate the international community; if they have penetrated foreign media, the effects on potential tourists appear yet negligible, and reports are charged with neither the spit nor flame of online articles and commentaries from Tunisian journalists and readers alike.
In the wake of shock and outrage regarding the military tribunal’s recent verdict in the Martyrs of the Revolution Affaire, the ANC seems to have become a veritable scapegoat for the growing pains of democratic transition, its interworkings the perceived epitome of mediocrity, incompetency, inefficiency, and obsoleteness.
480 out of 873 union members voted in the elections, presumably due in part to the absence of those who were prevented from attending the event because they did not have the obligatory member cards. Neither the Nawaat nor other online sources dwell on what would appear to be a significant administrative error…
Is the ‘Martyrs of the Revolution Affair’ that has inundated Tunisian media over the past week symbolic of an already-failing post-revolutionary justice system? Or does it instead reflect the reappearance of the same sort of political corruption that thrived under old regime? Either way, the gaping division between a recent decision announced by Tunisia’s military tribunal and public opinion has Tunisians up in arms or at least on edge about the political, legal, and moral integrity of the State.
Will continuing threats of strikes, milk siphoned across borders and spilled onto streets, and official demands for reforms within the dairy industry inspire more interest in prioritizing the needs of a suffering agricultural sector? Until now, articles and current issues of agricultural significance prompt little public response in comparison to other highly mediatized and provocative and agriculturally-relevant issues such as immigration, smuggling of contraband, border tensions, unemployment, international economic cooperation and trade.
Whereas abroad, «it is whispered in the halls of Washington that Mehdi Jomâa’s profile pleased [Americans] because it is that of a ‘pragmatic businessman,’» his discourse addressed to Tunisians pertaining to the country’s delicate economic situation has «stirred gossip and accusations of exaggeration and conspiracy theories.»
