The Economist: Post-revolutionary Tunisia – Moving Ahead

Frustration and uncertainty persist, but the country is heading the right way

 

COMPARED with the other upheavals across the Arab world this year, Tunisia’s is still the runaway winner. Since the country’s dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, with his greedy wife, Leila Trabelsi, flew off into a Saudi twilight on January 14th after a nationwide uprising that lasted barely a month, there have been political hiccups, sit-ins, strikes and riots, especially in the fly-blown towns of the interior, and several new governments. But under Beji Caid Sebsi, an avuncular 84-year-old who first served in a cabinet in the 1960s and took over as prime minister on February 27th, Tunisia has calmed down. “People think things are going better than they thought they would the day after the revolution,” says a diplomat.

The postponement until October 23rd of an election to a constituent assembly originally scheduled for July 24th was widely accepted with good grace after the independent electoral commission said it could not prepare properly in time. The country has a clear path ahead. The assembly, once elected, is expected to draw up a constitution within a year, perhaps even sooner, paving the way for a full-blown election. Tunisia is in with a good chance of having a decent democracy and a perky economy by the end of next year.

Its transitional government has a clutch of competent technocrats in key positions, several of whom worked abroad for many years in Western banks but were lured back by the call of patriotism. “Tunisia could be an amazing place,” says Jalloul Ayed, the finance minister, a former Citibank man and composer of classical symphonies. “We have a bright, highly educated population. We’re close to Europe’s markets. We have the right to dream of Tunisia as the Singapore of the Mediterranean. We could achieve it in five to seven years—with a few adjustments.”

The constituent assembly will comprise a range of secular and Islamist parties. More than 90 have registered. In a system of proportional representation in large constituencies, fewer than ten of them will probably get seats. The new constitution is likely to be both presidential and parliamentary, perhaps resembling the model of France, with which Tunisia still has many links. “But we don’t want it to be presidentialist,” says Rafaa Ben Achour, a minister of state and constitutional lawyer, stressing the last syllable.

Virtually every opinion poll puts Nahda, the main Islamist party, in the lead. It wins kudos for its courage and apparent incorruptibility under Mr Ben Ali, who imprisoned many of its leaders (and at one time a good 5,000 of the rank and file), some of them for 20 years. But no poll suggests that Nahda would come close to getting an outright majority. A recent one gave it 14%; its main rival, the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), in the secular centre, got 5%. More than two-thirds of Tunisians said they had not made up their minds. Few people, even the Islamists, predict that it will get more than 25%.

The big question is whether Nahda, led by a dignified 70-year-old, Rashid Ghannouchi, who returned this year after more than 20 years in exile, mostly in London, will emerge as the most potent single political force—and whether secular Tunisians, whose various parties together could easily form a majority, would allow it to wield a dominant influence, let alone untrammelled power.

Mr Ghannouchi (no relation of Muhammad Ghannouchi, the short-term prime minister after Mr Ben Ali’s fall) has bent over backwards to present Nahda as moderate and tolerant. His colleagues promise to abide by the rules of democracy, insist on women’s rights, and say they will not impose sharia law, ban alcohol or deter skimpily clad tourists from the West. Like Islamists across the Arab world who have refashioned themselves under new freedoms, Nahda says it looks to Turkey’s mild-mannered ruling Islamists.

But many of the three-quarters or so of Tunisians who do not consider themselves Islamist mistrust Nahda, many of them deeply. Again and again, secular-minded Tunisians accuse it of speaking in different tongues to different people. “They do not understand democracy or freedom,” says Mustapha Mezghani, a businessman who has set up a liberal party. “The least one can say is that they are ambiguous,” says Maya Jribi, the PDP’s co-leader, while deploring Nahda’s tendency, as she puts it, to “use the mosque for sending its political message”.

One movement, calling itself the Modernist Democratic Pole, including the former communist party, Tajdid, is trying to band all secular groups together to ensure that Nahda is kept out of power. Yet most Tunisians also seem aware that excluding Nahda from power could be more destabilising for the country than letting it in, perhaps even as a partner in coalition, at least during a jittery period of transition.

In any event, Tunisia needs a financial helping hand for the next year or so. In late May the G8 group of rich countries promised $20 billion to Tunisia and Egypt in loans and grants over the next three years, of which several billion is to go to Tunisia—the first tranche, according to the finance minister, within a few weeks. It is sorely needed. Economic growth, which was nearly 4% last year, will fall this year to less than 1%. Tourism, which accounted for 7% of GDP, has collapsed. Youth unemployment is around 23%, according to the labour minister. The minimum industrial wage for a 48-hour week is around $50. Of the 700,000 officially reckoned to be jobless in a population of 10.6m, some 170,000 are graduates—the angriest part of a populace enraged by the inequities and corruption that helped spark the revolution against Mr Ben Ali.

The mood in the harsh interior, where the revolution began, is impatient. In Kasserine, a town 300km (180 miles) south-west of Tunis, protesters call for the provincial governor, a military man, to go. Barbed wire surrounds banks and state-owned offices, with armoured cars outside. Civic leaders say that 40% of the townsfolk are unemployed. Last week two prisoners died in the third jail riot since January.

“If there is another social explosion, democracy will be stymied,” says Ms Jribi. Almost everyone in Tunis agrees, often adding that it is also vital that Libya, by far its closest neighbour, also comes right, with Muammar Qaddafi removed. “We consider the Libyan people an extension of the Tunisian people,” says the finance minister. If Libya is set free and Tunisia’s own electoral course goes according to plan, with the angry young men in such towns as Kasserine persuaded to hold their breath, the country could indeed become a beacon for the rest of the Arab world.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/18958251

Tunisians to vote in historic post-revolution polls

TUNIS: Tunisia, which launched the “Arab Spring” when its outraged citizens ousted a seemingly entrenched dictator in January, again takes the lead with a historic vote Sunday for the drafters of a new constitution.

“It is a historic turning point. Tunisians do not have the right to make mistakes, the world is watching this first test on the road to democracy,” a European diplomat said, amid an election campaign dotted with violent outbursts, some by Islamists.

Ten months ago, Tunisian fruitseller Mohamed Bouazizi from Sidi Bouzid, a neglected town in the west of the country, set himself on fire to protest abuses under the 23-year-old regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

He died days later, but Bouazizi’s action sparked Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution and region-wide revolts that have toppled leaders in Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli, and still threaten others.

Ben Ali, once backed by the West for his supposed role as a rampart against Islamisation, fled to Saudi Arabia a month into the leaderless uprising by Tunisians driven to the streets by social injustice, poverty and corruption.

Now, after a short transition period marked by protest against the pace of change and sporadic fits of violence, Tunisians will on Sunday have a chance to take charge of their destiny in the Arab world’s first post-revolution vote.

Despite the high stakes, however, voter interest is low in a complex electoral landscape: some 7.3 million potential balloters will elect 217 members of an assembly that will write the country’s new founding law, from more than 10,000 candidates.

Voters in the country of about 12 million people are faced with over 1,400 candidates lists: 787 belonging to political parties, 583 to independent candidates and 50 to party coalitions.

Most of the groupings propagate similar slogans of liberty, democracy and social justice. Half the candidates are women.

The new constitution will be the country’s third after those of 1861 and 1959, and will map out a new path by determining the type of government to take over a hitherto staunchly secular state.

The assembly will also choose an interim president who will appoint a prime minister and a government for the duration of the constitution drafting process leading up to new national elections.

Sunday’s polls will be run by the ISIE, an independent poll body based in the interior ministry that is widely blamed for ballot stuffing since Tunisian independence in 1956.

While the Islamic Ennahda (Renaisssance) party is polled to take the biggest block of votes in the Muslim majority country, the election system has been designed to include as many parties as possible in the constitution drafting process, to the benefit of smaller groups with fewer resources.

The votes cast in 33 constituencies will determine the number of seats allotted to each party. If votes are left over that are insufficient to give a party a full seat, these will be carried over to the next biggest party.

Ennahda, which had been banned under Ben Ali, has run a campaign vowing to build a democracy based on Islamic values, which it has said would include protecting women.

The party has denied involvement in an attack Friday night by Salafist conservatives on a television director’s house after the broadcast of a film deemed offensive to Muslims, while at the same time denouncing the “provocation”.

With more than 100 registered political parties, a handful stand out as strong contenders.

The Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), whose leader Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, was a vehement Ben Ali critic, has positioned itself as the main alternative to Ennahda and is polled as the second biggest party.

On the left of the political spectrum, the Ettajid former communist party gathers five smaller groupings opposed to Islamisation of the state, while the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party (POCT) led by Hamma Hammami, is one of the few parties to have put a woman at the head of an electoral list.

There are about 40 small parties seen as heirs to Ben Ali’s now dissolved Rally for Constitutional Democracy (RCD), which still has many bureaucrats in the system.

The large number of independent candidates in the poll has been interpreted by analysts as a sign of distrust in political parties like Ennahda, suspected by many of wanting to pick the fruits of a revolution they were not part of.

Opinion polls have suggested that a majority of Tunisians had no idea who they would vote for.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/17/tunisians-to-vote-in-historic-post-revolution-polls.html

UNITED NATIONS Rights Head Warns Of 'Civil War' In Syria – Al-Jazeera Intl News

International community urged to take immediate action as UN's estimated death toll since protests began exceeds 3,000.

The number of people killed in Syria in violence related to protests against President Bashar al-Assad's government has now reached more than 3,000, the United Nations human rights chief has said, as she has called for "the international community to take immediate measures to protect the Syrian people".

Navi Pillay, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, expressed her deep dismay at the "remorseless toll of human lives", according to a statement released from the body's head office in Geneva on Friday.

"The number of people killed since the violence started in March has now exceeded 3,000, including at least 187 children. More than 100 people have been reported killed in the last 10 days alone," she said.

"In addition, thousands have been arrested, detained, forcibly disappeared and tortured. Family members inside and outside the country have been targeted for harassment, intimidation, threats and beatings.

"As more members of the military refuse to attack civilians and change sides, the crisis is already showing worrying signs of descending into an armed struggle."

"The Government of Syria has manifestly failed to protect its population. Furthermore, it has ignored the international community's calls to co-operate with international investigations," the UN human rights chief said.

Meanwhile, activists said at least 9 people were killed in demonstrations across the country on Friday and that the number was expected to rise, Al Jazeera's Rula Amin reported from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon.

   "The demonstrations spread from Dera'a in the south to the central part of the country in Homs, in Idlib, and to the eastern part in Deir Azzour," Amin said.

"The slogans today were of course, the toppling of the regime, a call on Syrian officers and soldiers to refuse orders to shoot and a call on international community to provide help and to provide protection for civilians."

International action

Pillay said that the international community must take "protective action in a collective and decisive manner", before the violence drives Syria into "a full-blown civil war".

"Sniping from rooftops, and indiscriminate use of force against peaceful protesters - including the use of live
ammunition and the shelling of residential neighbourhoods - have become routine occurrences in many Syrian cities," Pillay said.

Such call by the UN human rights commissioner "will mean very good news for the [Syrian] people, because it will add pressure on the international community to do something," but it is unclear what exactly they expect the world to do, our correspondent Rula Amin said.

Some say they do want military intervention and even welcome it because of the intensity to which Assad has cracked down on the population with violence, Amin said.

"They're talking about no fly zones, to stop the Syrian military and the government from using planes and tanks."

However, one member of the coalition of opposition groups, said the struggle against the Assad regime must remain peaceful.

"There is a pull by some people to take the country towards armed resistance, [but] most people disagree," said Louay Safi, the chair of the political office of the Syrian National Council (SNC).

"The council itself believe the best option it to have unarmed resistance - a peaceful resistance."

"We should avoid civil war at all costs and we believe the regime will fall if the people continue opposing it and the world stops giving support [to the government] from the outside," Safi added.

Arab League

Arab League foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the ongoing unrest in protest-hit Syria, Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh said.

The meeting will "apparently look into what measures they can take against the Syrian regime, after it has refused all recommendations put forward by the League in their last meeting on Syria" ... including a list of political reforms and dispatching a fact-finding mission from the League, an Arab League source said, according to Rageh.

The 22-member Arab League has not yet approved the request but such meetings need only the approval of two members to take place.

Six member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) called for such a  meeting on Thursday, demanding on the need address "the situation in Syria, which has deteriorated sharply, particularly in its humanitarian dimensions, and steps that could help end the bloodshed and halt the machine of violence".

In a meeting on September 13, Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo and called on the Syrian authorities to "immediately stop the bloodshed," drawing a testy response from Damascus.

Nabil al-Arabi, the Arab League chief, had met Assad three days earlier and presented him with a 13-point document outlining Arab proposals for reform.

Source:http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011101492410996889.html

AlJazeera: Gaddafi 'being tracked by satellite'

Libya's National Transitional Council says that Muammar Gaddafi, the country's toppled leader, is in the southern desert region of the country, and that it is only a matter of time before he is captured.

Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, the vice-chairman of the NTC, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that satellites have been tracking the former Libyan leader south of Sabha.

"We have confirmed reports that Gaddafi is in the southern Libyan desert. He's not staying in one place. He is moving around with a small convoy which consists of his closest aides and bodyguards," he said.

Ghoga added that the fighters' priority is currently to take full control of Sirte, Gaddafi's hometown and one of the last places still contested between the NTC and Gaddafi loyalists.

"Once the liberation of Sirte has been achieved – our fighters will track down Gaddafi himself."

Battle for Sirte rages

NTC commanders have moved up tanks into the ousted leader's hometown to fire at buildings from close range to try to dislodge the remaining snipers loyal to Gaddafi who are now surrounded on all sides in one small part of the city.

Die-hard loyalists to the deposed leader have not given up the fight, answering NTC attacks in the city with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. An NTC commander said Gaddafi's besieged forces were no longer using heavier weapons.

"We have control of the whole of the city except neighbourhood 'Number Two' where the Gaddafi forces are surrounded," Khaled Alteir, a field commander in Sirte, said on Thursday.

"This operation is on its dying breath," said another commander, Colonel Mohammad Aghfeer.

The siege of Sirte, which began after the capital Tripoli fell to the NTC two months ago, has held up Libya's transition to normality as the country's new leaders say they will only start building a democratic system after the city is captured.

Green flags, the banner of Gaddafi's 42-year rule, still fly above many buildings in Sirte, but, another NTC commander said, the defending forces appear to have lost their cohesion.

"We've noticed now they are fighting every man for himself," said Baloun Al Sharie, a field commander. "We tried to tell them it's enough and to give themselves up, but they would not."

NTC officers say Gaddafi loyalists fear reprisals if they give themselves up.

NTC 'abuses'

Some captured fighters have been roughed up by NTC forces and Amnesty International issued a report on Wednesday saying Libya's new rulers were in danger of repeating human rights abuses commonplace during Gaddafi's rule. The NTC condemned practices highlighted in report.

 "Such acts could have possibly been perceived as acceptable at the beginning [of this revolution], given the brutal crimes committed by Gaddafis mercenaries – however today – they are unjustifiable," Ghoga said.

Close to the centre of the fighting in Sirte, government forces found 25 corpses wrapped in plastic sheets. They accused groups loyal to Gaddafi of carrying out execution-style killings. Five corpses shown to a Reuters news agency team wore civilian clothes, had their hands tied behind their backs and gunshot wounds to the head.

As the tanks pounded the apartment blocks where Gaddafi's men are holed up, pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns moved in behind, then infantry armed with AK-47s began their assault.

One field hospital received two NTC dead and 23 wounded on Thursday. One of the dead men had been hit while taking food up to the fighters on the frontline, doctors said.

In the skies, NATO aircraft have been carrying out reconnaissance missions and Britain said its jets had bombed and destroyed two pick-up trucks belonging to Gaddafi's forces in Sirte on Wednesday.

Air corridors

But as the battle for Libya draws towards what the NTC and NATO hope will be a close, both the new government and the Western alliance which helped topple Gaddafi are looking towards a return to normality.

The provisional Libyan government and NATO signed an agreement on Thursday to immediately open air corridors for international civilian flights from Benghazi, and domestic flights between the second city and Tripoli and Misrata.

This is one of the first steps toward NATO lifting its no-fly zone over Libya imposed after Gaddafi began a military assault on civilians protesting his one-man rule.

Philipp Roesler, Germany's economy minister, said 150 wounded Libyans would be treated in Germany. Berlin plans to support Libya with medical supplies and aid and help in training and educating young Libyans, he said.

"We are here because we see the most important raw material of Libya, it is not oil and gas...[it is] the younger people who started the revolution here. They need future and perspective after their victory," Roesler told a news conference in Tripoli.

Suspicious oil contracts

In another development, Ali Tarhuni, the NTC’s oil minister, vowed that Libya would investigate "every penny" of suspicious oil contracts signed under Gaddafi’s regime, which was responsible for what he called "unbelievable corruption".

"There will be specialised committees that will look into all these contracts and agreements starting with the oil sector," Tarhuni said, without giving details on contracts or companies.

Libya's oil production, which collapsed after the uprising in February, is expected to rise to nearly one million barrels per day by April from the current 400,000, Nuri Berruien, the head of the state-run National Oil Company, said.

 

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/201110140613310311.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial6&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_term=tweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount

Civil war in Syria? By Gwynne Dyer

BACK in 1989, when the communist regimes of Europe were tottering towards their end, almost every day somebody would say `There`s going to be a civil war.` And our job, as foreign journalists who allegedly had their finger on the pulse of events, was to say: `No, there won`t be.`

So most of us did say that, as if we actually knew. But the locals were pathetically grateful, and we turned out to be right.

It was just the same in South Africa in 1993-94. Another non-violent revolution was taking on another dictatorship with a long record of brutality, and once again most people who had lived their lives under its rule were convinced there would be a civil war. So we foreign journalists (or at least some of us) reassured them that there wouldn`t be, and again we turned out to be right.

Now it`s Syria`s turn, and yet again most of the people who live there fear that their non-violent revolution will end in civil war. It`s not my job to reassure them this time, because like most foreign journalists I can`t even get into the country, but in any case I would have no reassurance to offer. This time, it may well end in civil war. Like Iraq.

The Assad dynasty in Syria is neither better nor worse than Saddam Hussein`s regime was in Iraq. They had identical origins, as local branches of the same pan-Arab political movement, the Baath Party. They both depended on minorities for their core support: the Syrian Baathists on the 10 per cent Alawite (Shia) minority in that country, and the Iraqi Baathists on the 20 per cent of that country`s people who were Sunni Arabs.

They were both ruthless in crushing threats to their power. Hafez al-Assad`s troops killed up to 40,000 people in Hama when Sunni Islamists rebelled in Syria in 1982, Saddam Hussein`s army killed at least as many Shias in southern Iraq when they rebelled after the 1991 Gulf War, and both regimes were systematically beastly to their local Kurds.

When the American invaders destroyed Saddam Hussein`s regime in Iraq in 2003, however, what ensued was not peace, prosperity and democracy. It was a brutal civil war that ended with Baghdad almost entirely cleansed of its Sunni Muslim population and the whole country cleansed of its Christian minority. Only the Kurds, insulated by their own battle-hardened army and their mountains, avoided the carnage.

So if the Baathist regime in Syria is driven from power, why should we believe that what follows will be any better than it was in Iraq? The country`s ethnic and sectarian divisions are just as deep and complex as Iraq`s.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/civil-war-in-syria.html

More Syria deaths as dissidents urge Assad isolation

DAMASCUS: Thirty-eight people were killed in clashes in two days in northwest Syria, a rights activist said on Sunday, as dissidents meeting in Brussels called for the isolation of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Thirty-eight people were killed in shootings in the region of Jisrash Shughur, 10 yesterday and 28 today,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

The updated toll includes six members of the Syrian security forces.

Rahman earlier gave a toll of 25 – 19 civilians and six security agents – but warned that number could rise as military and security forces continued operations in the northwest Idlib province.

Residents of the central city of Hama, where at least 53 people were reported killed during anti-regime protests on Friday, said nearly 100,000 people were staging a protest during a three-day strike that began on Saturday.

On Saturday, an activist in Jisrash Shughur said “security forces opened fire to scatter more than 1,000 demonstrators protesting after the funeral of a civilian killed on Friday” in protests at the nearby village of Has.

Syria’s official SANA news agency reported at the time that “a member of the army was killed and a policeman injured in clashes” in Jisrash Shughur.

“Armed groups attacked a police station and military barracks in the area” and one assailant was killed, SANA said.

Rights groups say more than 1,100 civilians have been killed and at least 10,000 arrested in Syria since protests erupted in mid-March.

Damascus insists that the unrest is the work of “armed terrorist gangs”backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

Syria has freed more than 450 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience since Tuesday as part of a general amnesty announced by Assad, Rahman told AFP on Sunday.
Most of the released are Islamists or Kurds, he added.

Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar, meanwhile, ordered the creation of a committee tasked with drafting a law on political parties, SANA reported.

The current constitution stipulates that the ruling Baath party is “the leader of state and society” and political pluralism has been at the forefront of demands by pro-reform dissidents.

In Europe, Syrian opposition activists urged the international community to increase pressure on Assad and called for an independent investigation into his regime’s deadly crackdown.

The roughly 200 activists gathered in Brussels also said charges should be laid against those responsible for violations of human rights in the repression, and cases brought before the International Criminal Court.

“There needs to be more pressure on the regime,” organisers of the Brussels meeting said in a statement.

“It is very important to impose diplomatic isolation on the Syrian regime, and to not allow it to be represented in international bodies,” added the grouping, called the National Coalition of Support for the Syrian Revolution.

The European Union and the United States have already imposed sanctions on Assad and his inner circle.

The coalition dismissed as a “farce” Assad’s creation of a body tasked with creating a national dialogue.

A final resolution from the Brussels meeting announced the creation of a commission to evaluate human rights violations by the regime with the purpose of laying charges and sending cases to the International Criminal Court.

It said the coalition also wanted to “communicate with international organisations with the aim of coming up with a resolution condemning the violence by the Syrian regime.”

At a similar meeting in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya in Turkey on Wednesday and Thursday, opposition groups urged Assad’s immediate resignation and the holding of parliamentary and presidential elections within a year.

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, meanwhile, made a brief visit to the United Arab Emirates where he met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

“The demands of reform and the need for stability can go hand in hand as they can be reconciled,” the official WAM news agency reported Sheikh Mohammad as saying.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/06/more-syria-deaths-as-dissidents-urge-assad-isolation.html