A SPRING FAR BEHIND
Arab Spring dreams are snuffed out as Tunisia appears headed for a dictatorship following President Kais Saied’s suspension of parliament and sacking of the elected Prime Minister and his
Council of Ministers.
PRESIDENT KAIS SAIED with members of the special unit of the Tunisian National Guard. Photograph provided by the Tunisian presidency’s official Facebook page on August 4.
TUNISIA IN NORTH AFRICA WAS THE FIRST country in the region that saw authoritarian rule being substituted by parliamentary democracy after the events ignited by the Arab Spring. Sadly, it may soon join the ranks of the countries that have reverted to authoritarian rule after a brief tryst with multiparty democracy. On July 25, Tunisian President Kais Saied in a surprise move announced that he was suspending parliament and taking over the running of the government from the elected Prime Minister and his Cabinet.
For almost a decade following the overthrow of the despotic President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, the country has been under civilian rule and has held peaceful elections to elect a parliament and a President. The ouster of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power for more than 23 years, through mainly peaceful protests had enthused Arab masses all over the region. The new government led by the Ennahda Party became the first Arab regime to allow full freedom of expression. In the elections held regularly in the past decade, political parties of all hues were allowed to contest.
The Ennahda Party, which has close links with the Muslim Brotherhood, always got the biggest slice of the vote in successive elections. At the same time, it took care not to monopolise power, knowing well that most of the governments in the region looked at the Muslim Brotherhood with suspicion. The Ennahda described the President’s action in late July as “a coup against Tunisian democracy and its constitution” and “a betrayal of every Tunisian”. A member of the Tunisian parliament, Said Ferjani, said the “last ember of the Arab Spring has been snuffed out”. Tunisia’s largest trade union, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), which is frequently at odds with the Ennahda, also condemned the President’s move.
In neighbouring Egypt, the government led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power soon after the transition to democracy in Tunisia, was overthrown in 2013 before completing barely a year in office. The party was banned in Egypt. Most of its leaders are languishing behind bars along with thousands of political prisoners. The countries that were profoundly affected by the Arab Spring—egypt, Yemen, Syria and Libya—took different political paths. The monarchies in the Gulf and in Morocco had quickly announced more economic subsidies for their subjects and introduced cosmetic reforms to stave off street protests. Egypt, after a brief tryst with multiparty democracy, reverted to military rule. Yemen is still mired in a never-ending civil war.
The West and its allies in the region used the Arab Spring protests to overthrow republican and secular governments that pursued independent foreign policies in the region. The West and its conservative Arab allies used the isolated protests that had broken out in Libya to intervene militarily and bring about regime change there. After the assassination of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, the country plunged into a civil war and chaos. It is yet to recover from the negative impact of the Arab Spring. Tunisia, on the other hand, witnessed a comparatively peaceful transition to civilian rule. But there was no change in the economic model that the country followed. The economy continued to depend substantially on tourism. Already affected by the political turbulence in the region, the tourism sector took a bigger hit after the coronavirus pandemic struck last year. Unemployment has been at a record high and the shortages of vaccine to combat the COVID-19 virus has angered large sections of the population.
Many Tunisians started complaining that there was no improvement in the standard of living following the overthrow of the dictatorship. In fact, the country is facing its worst economic crisis since it gained independence from French rule. The trade deficit that the civilian government had inherited from the military dictatorship has only increased. The democratically elected governments since 2012 have been forced to adopt the same development model recommended by the international financial institutions that had created economic inequality and the debt crisis in the first place. These policies were an important factor in triggering the Arab Spring revolt in Tunisia.
Meanwhile, the value of the Tunisian currency has