On 17 December 2010, a young Tunisian in Sidi Bouzid sets himself ablaze. One by one, the country’s regions rise up. On 14 January 2011, after 23 years of dictatorship, Ben Ali leaves the country. Like so many other Tunisians, Karim Rmadi, Olfa Lamloum, Ghassen Amami and Selim Kharrat decide to return home after many years abroad. Four stories that tell of revolutionary fervor, the challenges of transition, and an unshakable faith in the future.
In the town of Jemna, residents have formed an association dedicated to the preservation and cultivation of 185 hectares of reclaimed oases for the production of dates. The Association for the Protection of Jemna’s Oases is composed of 129 workers including farmers and security guards, three supervisors responsible for managing the workers, administration and finances, plus one general supervisor. Nawaat has traveled to meet with the individuals who have taken over the land in the name of Jemna and its residents.
The agitation that a democratic model allows represents a prompt for open, substantial discussion, create space for questions to form and answers to be formulated, for awareness to shift and public opinion to fluctuate and controversy to take its course … For over a decade, Nawaat has been a platform many of whose contributors are quick to question, criticize, and call out the Tunisian and foreign governments for hypocrisy, complicity, exploit, corruption…the very symptoms of defective governance that were renounced by youth and activists and journalists of the so-called Arab Spring, the same individuals whom Western democracies and international agencies have so effusively commended for their courage and commitment to changing the status quo. And so inevitably it feels like something of a betrayal when requests for more specific information and questions regarding political motives are consistently held at bay, excluded from discussions, or, most conveniently, ignored.
If major political forces succeeded in controlling the Kasbah, it was largely due to inadequate management on the part of the youth who were the driving force of the occupation. Indeed, confusion and personal conflicts were factors in the movement’s extinction. By now many participants have had time to ruminate these errors. What remains is to shed led upon the movement’s successes. «Through the sit-ins we imposed an ethics threshold which all political parties had to observe, » Azyz Amami told Nawaat; the youth who took part in the movement demonstrated extreme democratic creativity that surpassed old forms of power.
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.
In Bouzaiéne, one week after the legislative elections, residents are in mourning. Grieving their revolt, they speak only of disappointment. Here, nothing has changed, neither the high rate of unemployment, nor the shortage of water, nor the loss of dignity. For the residents of Bouzaiéne, the democratic transition has not reached Sidi Bouzid. Slogans like «anti-power» and «anti-system» freshly spray-painted onto walls throughout the city liberate the suppressed voices of the Voiceless.
At the beginning of the month, Journalist Farhat Othman criticized the Italian Interior Minister’s visit to Tunisia, observing that an offering of patrol boats, in the guise of support against terrorism and contraband, could only be intended for support against clandestine immigration since it consists of «patrol vessels mandanted by the cooperation agreement linking Tunisia and Italy since 2011 after the massive wave of Tunisians to Italy.» As if to provide a caricature of European politicans obsessed by preserving EU security, Nicolas Sarkozy addressed a cheering crowd of supporters in Nice earlier this week, calling for the «refounding» of the Schengen Area and «a real immigration policy to put an end to social tourism in our country.»
In this newest publication, World Bank economists Antonio Nucifora and Bob Rijkers reiterate this background of corruption, characterized by «limited competition and active state intervention» and of which enduring vestiges are manifest in «three dualisms, namely the onshore-offshore division, the dichotomy between the coast and the interior, and the segmentation of the labor market»– to explain the present economic crisis that is its legacy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Perusing the articles available in American media on Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa’s visit to Washington, one is faced with the gradation of quality and specificity and attention to detail that exists among different news sources…one is reminded that The Washington Post is a reliable outlet for fluffy pieces about the US’ benevolent role in the so called developing world, for sweeping generalizations about terrorism, the Arab Spring, democracy, etc. Unsurprisingly, most US news sources follow in this line of reporting.
Two themes that prevail in blogs, reports, news articles, and interviews about art and artists in Tunisia are the gap between politics and people, especially youth, and the criminalization and marginalization of art and artists that has continued after the revolution.
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