LETTER FROM TUNIS:The path to political stability will be long in a country stalked by uncertainty and doubt, writes RUADHÁN MAC CORMAIC
IN THE fortnight since their president was deposed and much of his police state went with him, Tunisians have relished swapping stories that capture the sort of dizzying change many of them suspected they would never see. Men sit in cafes arguing loudly about politics, their fear of the mouchards, or eavesdroppers, already evaporated. Journalists marvel at their new-found freedom to doubt the benevolence of government in print. Human rights activists talk giddily of visiting each other’s homes without a tail. “I’ve never had so many newspapers,” said a delighted kiosk-owner as he pointed to all the titles he had never before been allowed to stock.
In a bigger capital than Tunis, a city of fewer than 800,000 people where friends can expect to bump into each by chance, recent changes might have seemed less immediately tangible or somehow more remote. But a stroll along the wide, cafe-lined Avenue Habib Bourguiba, named after the first post-independence leader and now the symbolic heart of the Tunisian state, offers a microcosm of all that has changed. In the shadow of the imposing grey interior ministry, guarded by soldiers behind rings of barbed wire, passers-by spontaneously huddle around to listen to one another discuss their country’s future. One day, I counted eight such groups – a few dozen men and women of all ages and classes clustered around a speaker, listening intently as he made his political pitch. Should we give the interim government the benefit of the doubt? What role for the Islamists? Where does the protest movement go from here? The back-and-forth of debate continued until nightfall. In a society where public political discussion was for so long restricted, the appetite for conversation has been remarkable. Every time I took out a notebook, a dozen people would gather around within a few minutes, eager to have their say.
Outside the municipal theatre, a protest seemed to be taking place every hour, a few dozen young people bellowing democratic slogans and launching into the national anthem, a stirring tune whose chorus was given a fresh resonance as the soundtrack of the uprising:
When the people wish to live,
Destiny must surely respond.
Oppression shall then vanish.
Fetters are certain to break.
I spent a week in Tunisia eight months ago, when I took part in a trip co-ordinated by the European Commission to look at the effects of its Neighbourhood Policy, a programme that covers the bloc’s ties to countries on its doorstep. Instructive as the week turned out to be, it was most memorable for the insight it gave into Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s paranoia.
Despite having been authorised by Tunis after drawn-out negotiations months in advance, the government intervened at the last minute to remove all meetings with ministers and officials from our schedule. Our hotel in central Tunis cancelled our booking days before our arrival – under orders, I learned this week – and other hotels were mysteriously full, forcing us to base ourselves in a tourist zone north of the city.
And so it continued. Diplomats and hotel staff assured us that our phone calls were being listened to, our e-mails read and our movements monitored.
Every time I left the hotel alone, I was followed, and for the week we were accompanied by an information ministry official who pretended to be a tourist guide. Engaging ordinary people in conversation about current affairs, let alone Ben Ali and his family, was difficult, and when I did have candid conversations with journalists and others, they asked that we meet outdoors.
Over the past fortnight, I tracked down several of the people I met eight months ago and found each had been caught up in the intoxicating idealism of the past month. Our guide, who told me she had been followed for three days after we left last year, took part in the protests by linking people online and discreetly spreading news of demonstrations. A young journalist, Hajer Ajroudi, told me she had been suspended from work and investigated by the secret service after being falsely accused of mentioning the name of a banned author in her paper. When the protests reached Tunis, she told her editors she was taking some time off and joined her friends on the streets. She cried as she recalled it all.
Tunisia is stalked by uncertainty and doubt. Divisions have already emerged in a protest movement whose unifying objective – the removal of Ben Ali – has been achieved, and the path to political stability will be a long and circuitous one. And yet for many Tunisians, one of the protest movement’s most remarkable feats is to have already established the idea that there can be no going back. As Ajroudi said: “You get used to freedom, even if you only have it for two or three days.”