Tunisia: the struggle for dignity

Yassine Poli

« The regime in Tunisia is strong… it is the legitimate descendant of the national State since 1956.” These words were the comment Borhane Bsais, Tunisian journalist and intellectual, made about the Tunisian popular revolt, during the so-popular show of Al-Itijah Al-Mouakis “against the grain” on the Qatari channel Al Jazeera, defending the fallen regime of the former Tunisian president, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, in hiding in Saudi Arabia since January 14th, 2011.

Nevertheless, three days later, (the show was broadcasted live on January 11th, 2011), it’s the end of this police state, highly destabilized by huge popular protests that was challenging it during the past three weeks. A gigantic social movement now called “Jasmine revolution”, which will lead to a similar one in Egypt, and elsewhere in North-Africa and the Middle-East. It is called by the eminent specialists “the Arab spring”. A look back at these sociopolitical movements that attended the Arab world since the beginning of 2011.

Tunisia: The Jasmine revolution of the revolution for dignity

One has to be Tunisian in order to understand why the Tunisian prefer to name their revolution: Revolution for dignity, rather than the name given in western medias: Jasmine revolution. Yet, on December 17th, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian, unemployed university graduate, dared to scarify himself, by self-immolation, in order to express that social and political discontent that a whole people lived, despised, killed and detained by a dictatorial government that ruled Tunisia since General Ben Ali took power on November 7th, 1987.

Five days following the immolation of the Martyr Bouazizi (December 22nd, 2011), it’s another Tunisian’s turn, from the same city of Sidi Bouzid, in the center of Tunisia, shouting that he wanted “no more misery, no more unemployment”. Undergoing unemployment, disregard, high living costs and the gap in growth between their region and other touristic regions in the North of Tunisia, the civil population takes the streets in order to demonstrate peacefully their anger with the current situation.

On December 24th, 2010, 60km away from Sidi Bouzid, in the locality of Menzel Bouzayane, violent combats between civilians and police result to one death and several injured. Few days later, the protests have reached the capital Tunis, and as in any tyranny, the security solution was preferred. The civilians were violently dispersed by law enforcement authorities, leading to several injuries amongst the civilians.

“I have understood you”: This short sentence isn’t Charles de Gaulle’s at Algiers in 1958; it is definitely Ben Ali’s, who’s expressing his understanding of the “hardness due to the unemployment situation and its psychological impact on he who undergoes it”, 23 years after he took the power after a coup d’état. In accordance to his dictatorial practices, in his address to the nation on December 28th 2010, the first since the beginning of the social riots that destabilize his government, the former Tunisian president promises a better future, while threatening the Tunisian from making eventual political demands that would question his regime.

Mohamed Bouazizi, street vendor and the now famous symbol of the revolution for dignity in Tunisia and the Arab world, dies on the 4th of January 2011, and 5000 people march behind his coffin, promising vengeance all along their way to the cemetery. The revolution enters then another phase during the few following days. The 8th and 9th of January were two bloody days. Sure enough, the violent riots’ toll in three cities in the central western part of the country: Kasserine, Thala and Regueb, is 21 dead, according to official sources, and 50 dead from syndical sources. Thus, the Tunisian rediscover the real murderous face of the regime that has been ruling them with an iron fist since two decades.

During his second address of January 10th 2011, the general promises 300 000 additional jobs by 2012. It is made possible for him to achieve that thanks to the limitless generosity of his eastern colleague in tyranny, Gaddafi of Libya. The zero tolerance option wasn’t excluded. Schools and universities closed their doors, and since January 12th, a nocturnal curfew in the capital and its suburbs was decreed by the former minister of interior’s stand-in.

« There is no presidency for life » : The decision would have been relieving if it had been declared years ago, but in Ben Ali’s case during these events, it expresses a real fear amongst his regime. During his third address since the beginning of the riots, his last as president of Tunisia, Ben Ali makes a commitment to give up presidency by 2014, to stop fires against the protesters, to lower essential products’ prices and to lift the censorship on internet websites. Tunisian people’s response was to defy the curfew and to take the streets of Tunis and the largest cities such as Carthage and Sidi Bou Saïd in order to express their joy.

By announcing the dissolution of his governments and the organization of anticipated legislative elections in six months, on January 14th 2011, the fleeing president played his last card, and the Tunisian people, acknowledging what’s waiting for him if his regime ever stays in place, wants his departure from the State’s top.

At the end of the day, Mohammed Ghannouchi, Tunisia’s Prime Minister, declares that he will temporarily fill the position of president because the head of state “is temporarily unable to fulfill his responsibilities”. Actually, the latter had taken a flight, few hours earlier, to Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. Choosing that country wasn’t voluntary. It is justified by the fact that none of the former president’s regime's allies, France and Malta amongst others, was ready to receive him. By exiting governance of Tunisia and fleeing to the Golf, Ben Ali was forced to obey the will of the people for a real democratic transition, in which the Tunisian people would be the true source of political legitimacy, which was shown by the following months.

The consequences of the Tunisian popular uprising greatly exceed its frontiers. Hundreds of kilometers away from the east of Tunisia, and barely 10 days after the overthrow of Ben Ali’s regime, it’s Mubarak’s Egypt that will start its popular revolution, which will make another Arab dictator abandon the chair.