Arab Spring changed the Arab world. Some countries for the better, others for the worse.
Considered by many to be one of the few success stories of the Arab Spring, Tunisia seems to have come a long way from authoritative dictatorships to having a democratically elected president in 2019. Ten years since the Arab Spring, here’s a look at one of the beacons of hope of the Arab world and an analysis into whether it is true to be called one.
A legacy of power-grabbing: Pre-Ben Ali
The Arab Spring started in the December of 2010 saw a rise of protests against the then president and dictator of 23 years, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali had seized power from his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba in 1987 in a bloodless and largely peaceful coup.
Bourguiba was one of the prominent figures in negotiating the independence of Tunisia from the French colonizers in 1955-56. His party, Neo-Destour won the first democratic elections in a sweeping majority in a country whose election laws, albeit sophisticated - were skewed to make the Neo-Destour party win. The system not only guaranteed Neo-Destour domination; from the start, the winner-take-all rules also eliminated even symbolic representation by party opponents and independents.
When opposition parties started gaining support in local elections, Bourguiba cracked down on them and soon nearly out-lawed them. Those who did not share his “liberal” (women were granted equal rights and education was formalized) views or methods of governance were cut off from the system. The legislature he sought seemed to be ineffective and his modernisation ideas, though a small success - seemed to not help his waning popularity because of turning increasingly authoritarian and clampdown on Islamist groups and censorship of the media.
Ben Ali, an engineer and former ambassador to Poland had gained a reputation as a hard-liner in suppressing riots in 1978 and 1984, and in 1986 he became minister of the interior, taking an active role in rooting out the Islamic Tendency Movement, an Islamist group blamed for a number of antigovernmental demonstrations. Then on, he was in the upper ranks of the government and was appointed Prime Minister by Bourguiba in 1987.
Talks of Bourguiba’s ill health and incompetence started circling and on the night of 6 November 1987 a group of seven doctors signed a medical report attesting to the mental incapacity of Bourguiba. The following day, Ben Ali announced himself as the new president on the national radio. Ben Ali acquired a broken system riddled with economic and social concerns and a legacy of imprisonments, torture and repression of Islamists and opponents.
The Ben Ali Regime
Ben Ali assumed power on November 7, which is why numerous streets, squares and also the state broadcaster were named after this key date. Dialing codes were even changed from 0 to 7. Many Tunisians, meanwhile, liked to joke in private that they were stuck with their long-term president "for life."
This joke soon came to be a reality as Ben Ali continued to rule Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years. This period saw the worst human rights abuses in the North-African country in several decades.
Promising economic and social reforms, he gained power in rigged elections, claiming 99% majority. His assured civil liberties but allowed close to none political opponents to exist in the public sphere - imprisoning, persecuting and torturing them or forcing them into exile, most of which were Islamists. The press was heavily censored, disallowing them to air any criticism of the incumbent government.
Ben Ali sought to modernize the Tunisian economy, which was fueled in large part by its export-oriented textile industry and tourism industry. With the help of the IMF and World Bank, state regulations were loosened and many sectors were privatized - a move lauded by the West.
The catch, however, was that Ben Ali and his wife, made huge amounts of profits off these schemes. They got cheap loans from the state bank to buy estate, airlines, telephone networks and hotels overseas. Any investment made guaranteed them a 10-20% share in profits.
Ineffectiveness of these schemes and growing corruption in governmental agencies led to a growing distrust in the leader and the functioning of a government steeped in corruption and political puppets. Economically, the country was in ruins where the rich and Ben Ali’s friends got richer while the poor suffered under them.
Protests against Ben Ali were scattered and police brutality usually kept them in low numbers. However, things changed drastically in December 2010, when a street vendor named Md. Bouazizi lit himself on fire in the public square due to frustration over the economic conditions and police power that seized his vegetable stand claiming he did not have a permit. Bouazizi quickly became a national icon and people united behind his sacrifice in large numbers. This movement is said to be the Jasmine Movement (in reference to the Tunisian flag).
The protests grew in huge numbers each day and became a movement that soon led to the fleeing of Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia in early 2011. It included people of ages, sects and women joined in huge numbers too. Although the police crackdowns on protests were extremely brutal, what secured his fate was the withdrawing of support from the Army. By the middle of 2011, the Supreme Court convicted Ben Ali and his wife of embezzlement and later, for drug and gun smuggling and granted them 35 + 15 years of sentence each, for both charges.
By March, further protests had forced the party to break up and its members from their ministerial posts, making the way for Beji Caid Essebsi’s interim government to take charge. This government ruled the country until the country’s first properly democratic elections in October 2011, which brought the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) to power. Public discourse was thrown open to any and all, and leaders of various sects joined together to frame the new constitution in 2014, regarded as one of the most progressive in the region.
This widespread wave of new hope spread across the region and led to similar movements in Egypt, followed by Syria, Morocco and Yemen, thus the name of Arab Spring. Considered to be a largely peaceful movement by outsiders, many human rights activists inside Tunisia see the movement to be the opposite. For a country is not used to seeing 300 of its citizens die for something that gets taken away from them again and again.
Present Day
The protest that soon turned into a widespread movement in the neighboring Arab countries that toppled oppressive governments, seems to have died down. Some say a second revolution is in its tracks.
Tunisia has been relatively successful in comparison to its counterparts in the regions, like Egypt, Libya and Syria - all torn by civil war and heavy military rule. But is that a good enough metric? Is a civil war the threshold or should it be the only metric for failure? In comparison to its neighbors, Tunisia seems to have undergone the most amount of reform, providing accountability and delivering justice, too.
Tunisia has held several democratic elections, but not without the assassinations of politicians (something that never happened even in Ben Ali’s regime). The media is generally considered to be free and people are allowed to assemble and protest peacefully. They are trying to provide national reconciliation by the Truth and Dignity Commission which investigates politicians and human rights abuses from the dictator’s regime, but that too, is riddled with controversy and transparency issues - like providing amnesty to politicians of the Ben Ali regime. Poverty still exists.
Alas, the bottom line is that 10 years is not a long time to transform a country. Not after so many years of authoritarian rule. The process of reforming a society from its very roots - one that has seen military rule and oppression of people as a part of their daily routine - and doing away with all the perils of the past will take years of consistent effort, patience and letting go of previously held beliefs.
But the truth is, the barrier of fear is broken. People do recognise they have a real power, that can achieve something. Being heard is the first step.
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