Six weeks after Ben Ali’s exit, interim premier resigns amid resurgent unrest
More than six weeks after its long-time dictator went into exile, Tunisia remains in turmoil, beset by resurgent violence, strikes, government paralysis and an economy that has yet to return to business as usual.
Mohamed Ghannouchi , who had served as prime minister since Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali was forced out of office, stepped down late on Sunday following a weekend of mass protests and violence. On Friday, thousands gathered at Kasbah Square in Tunis to demand the prime minister and parliament resign. The next day clashes between demonstrators and security personnel in front of the Interior Ministry left five dead.
Ghannouchi said in address to the nation he was quitting "because I am not willing to be a person that takes decisions that would end up causing casualties." But critics said the problem is that his government is failing to make any decisions at all and they aren’t confident the new prime minister, Beji Caid Essebsi, will be more successful.
The cradle of the revolution now spreading across the Middle East, Tunisia also illustrates the problems faced by Egypt and any other country that topples a dictatorial regime. Political parties and the other institutions of civil society are weak or non-existent, the remnants of the old regime engage in rearguard actions, and transitional governments struggle to establish legitimacy.
“You’d expect when we have a revolution it would provide a class of leaders that could measure up,” Larbi Sadiki, a lecturer in Middle East politics at Exeter University in Britain, told The Media Line.
“Ben Ali has done so much damage to the political class. You don’t have a vibrant civil society, political parties, or credible leaders. When I interviewed the people who are heads of political parties, they were all in the 70s and 80s,” said Sadiki, who specializes in democratization in the Arab World
Tunisia’s problems are being compounded by a flood of refugees from Libya, where leader Muamar Al-Qadaffi is battling rebels. Tens of thousands of guest workers – most of them third-country nationals – have crossed the border into Tunisia and are stranded at a tent city while they await help from their governments to get home.
Ghannouchi, the last remaining Ben Ali loyalist in the cabinet, never won the support of most Tunisians, because of his background and his failure to settle the country’s urgent problems, observers said. Ghannouchi enjoyed a brief period of calm in early February after he had dismissed the last Ben Ali-affiliated ministers in his cabinet. But this began to unravel last week as patience began running out.
“The situation since last weekend has been a bit tense,” Sadok Belaid, a former dean of Tunis University’s law school, told The Media Line. “Security is the major problem right now.”
Masoud Ramadani, who is affiliated with the Tunisian Human Rights Union and is a trade union activist, said Ghannouchi had failed to produce a road map for the transition to democracy. Although elections have been promised for July, no decision has been made whether to amend the constitution or rewrite it altogether. That, in turn, will determine whether the country will hold a presidential vote or elections for a constitutional assembly, he said.
Nor did Ghannouchi bring stability to Tunisia. Many Tunisians believe apparatchiks from Ben Ali’s Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratic (RDC) party are behind the continuing crime and violence and say the government has failed to tackle it.
"Those who were arrested have admitted they were pushed by former Ben Ali officials," an unnamed government official told Reuters following the killings at the Interior Ministry.
While the cabinet was purged of people belonging to RDC, most senior government officials are holdovers from the old regime.
“The people would like to get rid of the old government completely and establish a new government of technocrats that will lead to free elections,” said Ramadani. “That’s what the majority of people would like, but the political parties are hesitating.”
Essebsi, Tunisia’s new prime minister, is a figure out of Tunisia’s history books and exemplifies the problem the country is having transitioning to a new political order. Eighty-four years old, he joined the government of Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first president, in 1956 as an adviser. He held a series of cabinet posts in the 1960s and again in the 1980s.
Belaid said Essebsi’s credentials are solid but that he is likely to fill the cabinet with people he knows, replacing younger, European- and American-educated figures with elder statesmen.
“He played an important role in the beginning of the Ben Ali regime as chairman of the National Assembly. But he is mostly a liberal,” Belaid said. “He was disappointed by the evolution of the Ben Ali regime to a dictatorship, so he retired.”
Belaid said the Tunisian public is celebrating Ghannouchi’s departure and are taking a wait-and-see attitude towards the new premier. But Ramadani and Sadiki both doubt Essebsi will be able to stabilize Tunisia any more than his predecessor could.
“The Arab world has entered an era of chaos in a positive way. It will be very difficult to govern everywhere … People know they can take to streets and demand things, and get them,” said Sadiki. “Tunisia is going to be a situation of continuous protest until the whole system collapses.”