Just who or what might emerge to replace Ben Ali is anyone's guess, writes RUADHAN MAC CORMAIC
THE SPARK for the round of unrest that precipitated President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali’s dramatic departure from Tunisia last night has a name, a date and a location. On December 17th, Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old university graduate who couldn’t find a regular job, had a run-in with the police in Sidi Bouzid, some 200km from Tunis. They confiscated his fruit and vegetable cart and verbally abused him, according to subsequent reports.
He reacted by setting himself alight in front of the governor’s office and later died.
The incident resonated widely because it captured two powerful grievances for many young Tunisians.
The first is unemployment: the official jobless rate is 15 per cent, but among the young it’s double that and conditions are particularly dire in inland towns such as Sidi Bouzid, which is far from the thriving coastal zones where Tunisian tourism flourishes.
The second is state repression: Ben Ali’s regime is one of the most authoritarian in the region. He runs a tightly controlled society where many human rights activists and journalists have been beaten up and imprisoned, websites are blocked and state surveillance is extensive.
So while Mohammed Bouazizi’s death set off the chain of events, the roots of the explosion of anger on the streets lie deeper.
While in Tunis last year, I went along to hear a speech being delivered by prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, the man who took over yesterday as interim president. The event encapsulated Tunisia’s paradox. In a plush hotel surrounded by whitewashed modern-style homes belonging to the country’s burgeoning middle classes, Ghannouchi outlined to the gathering of technology investors his country’s stunning economic development over recent decades.
He described one of the most economically liberal, business-friendly regimes in the Arab world, judged by the World Economic Forum to be Africa’s most competitive country. Its 10 million people enjoyed free education, high literacy and home ownership rates and a relatively good health system.
But that openness has never extended to other areas. Every time Ghannouchi spoke the name of Ben Ali, every Tunisian in the room took the cue and immediately broke out in applause.
His portrait adorned every newspaper’s front page, hotel lobby and public space in the country. I was told by a diplomat to assume my phone was tapped. Reporters without Borders last year placed Tunisia in 154th place out of 175 on its press freedom index, just below Sudan and Zimbabwe.
While western powers believed Tunisia’s elections were neither free nor fair (Ben Ali was re-elected for a fifth time in 2009 with 90 per cent of the vote – something of a slump on his previous results in 1989, 1994 and 1999, when he got more than 95 per cent).
But Tunisia’s stability and its tough stance on radical Islamists were highly valued in Washington, Paris and other capitals, so its human rights record tended to be low on bilateral agendas. France’s reluctance to pronounce publicly on events in Tunisia this week – it eventually condemned “disproportionate” police violence – was a reflection not only of the sensitivities at play for the former colonial power but to the strong political and business ties that have bound the two countries for decades.
Great uncertainty now hangs over Tunisia. Ben Ali may be gone – temporarily, Ghannouchi insists – but leaders in the Arab world and the West will be anxiously watching over the coming days for signs of what or who might emerge in his place.
The question of who might replace Ben Ali were he not to return is the most important, and yet in the current chaos that’s anyone’s guess. Some believe the president’s son-in-law, Sakher Materi, was being groomed for the succession, but we don’t even know if he remains in the country.
The opposition is weak and divided and parts of it are perceived as being the puppets of the government. Najib Chebbi, founder of the PDP party, is viewed by western diplomats as the most credible of the opposition leaders.
Others are in exile in France; will they return? What about candidates within the administration? And then, of course, there’s the influential military leadership to reckon with.