A few days before the Francophonie Summit, which will be held in Djerba, Tunisia, on November 19 and 20, The duty went to take the pulse of this advanced point of Africa both so close and so far from the West.
Late Thursday afternoon, a pallet of sugar arrived at the Monoprix supermarket on Avenue Jean-Jaurès in Tunis. An hour later, the shelves were as empty as the day before. In time to say it, customers flocked to the precious crystals, which are sorely lacking in all grocery stores in Tunisia. Shortage of sugar, but also of milk, rice, oil, coffee and certain medicines. There were even days when supermarkets ran out of bottled water.
“I’ve never seen the country in this state”, confides the journalist Zied El Hani, before affirming with regret that “it was better under Ben Ali”! The formula is dropped. Not a taxi driver, not a hairdresser, not a receptionist will tell you the opposite: under the very corrupt dictator Ben Ali, ousted from power in 2011 by the streets and the explosion of the Arab springs, the country was better managed. “At the time, prices were affordable and the country was growing at 5%,” says Zied El Hani. Today, official unemployment is at 18% and inflation at 9%. In a few months, the kilo of tomatoes went from half a dinar to three or four dinars. It is no longer possible! »
Originally from Sidi Hmada, a mountain village in the center of the country where Tunisia’s last maple trees grow, El Hani is the one who first used the words “Jasmine Revolution” to refer to the Tunisian youth uprising in 2011. Triggered in December after the immolation by fire of the itinerant merchant Mohamed Bouazizi, this uprising will give the signal for the start of the revolts which will sweep the Arab world from Algeria to Yemen.
“It was the evening of January 13,” he recalls, seated at the Grand Café of the theater, frequented by the wealthy and educated youth of the country. While Ben Ali had just promised not to run again in 2014, the article affirmed that the youth in revolt “offered bouquets of jasmine to the children of the people” to conclude that, sometimes, “dignity came before bread”.
two revolutions
” We are no longer there ! » deplores Hassen Zargouni, managing director of Sigma Conseil, a consulting firm located throughout North Africa. Since then, Tunisia has had eight governments, none of which has been able to agree to create the Supreme Court, apply electoral rules and establish an independent judiciary. Until President Kaïs Saïed, acclaimed in 2019 by 72% of voters, dissolved Parliament and had a new constitution adopted by referendum granting him all powers, from the initiative of laws to the dismissal of ministers.
Today, Hassen Zargouni would risk five years in prison and a fine of 50,000 dinars if he reveals that the popularity of the head of state is declining, as other experts have nevertheless maintained. The new constitution prohibits all polls three months before the early legislative election which will take place on 17th December next.
[Saïed] sees himself as a caliph reforming a corrupt city
“In 2011, there were two revolutions,” he says. The first demanded bread and work and mobilized the poorest strata of the population. The second, more urban and minority, demanded more freedoms and democracy. Our mistake was to think it was the same. »
It was the partisans of the second who took power, says Zargouni. But, unlike their predecessors, they knew nothing about state management. “The incessant bickering between politicians has disgusted Tunisians with partisan politics and parliament. Kaïs Saïed was the response of the population in order to free themselves from the partisan politics which had betrayed them. »
A former professor of law with a bland tone and the profile of an ascetic speaking in literary Arabic, Kaïs Saïed seems to have come from nowhere. A conservative of unquestionable integrity, he won easily in 2019 against Nabil Karoui, a businessman from the media, accused of corruption and who campaigned from his cell. Saïed then sets himself up as a supporter of the people against the corrupt elites and the political parties. He particularly denounces the Islamists of Ennahda who, after having tried to Islamize Tunisia until 2014, participated in all the coalition governments. One of his first symbolic gestures consists in changing the anniversary date of the revolution, by replacing January 14, the date of the fall of Ben Ali, with December 17, which marks the beginning of the great popular demonstrations.
A dictator ?
“Saïed has a real political project, says Vincent Geisser, who teaches at the University of Aix-Marseilles. He says that Western democracy is not made for Tunisia and that it is not adapted to Arab culture. It’s a mix of 1960s Third Worldism and Arab nationalism. He sees himself as a caliph reforming a corrupt city. »
Should we call him a dictator? There is no doubt for Hamadi Redissi. On this sunny afternoon, in his family villa in La Marsa, a peaceful suburb 17 kilometers from the city where the Beys of Tunis came to contemplate the sea in the 19e century, he does not mince his words. ” A dictatorship soft remains a dictatorship all the same, says the political scientist. It is not bloodthirsty, but it is a despotic power above the law. You don’t need armor for that. »
Tunisia was however the Arab country which had all the assets to march towards democracy, he recalls. In the Arab world and in Africa, it has always been an example both for the condition of women and for economic modernization, its middle class or its civic culture.
“We passed our entrance exam, but we did not know how to manage our democratic career,” he says. Democracy cannot survive without some prosperity. In the population, we speak today of the “black decade” to designate the years of democracy. The political scientist fears that Kaïs Saïed will use the Francophonie Summit to be held on November 19 and 20 in Djerba to “restore some credibility, normalize and appear as a frequentable power”.
The arbitrariness of the new president, Lofti Hadji has tasted it. While, on July 25, 2021, Kaïs Saïed dissolved Parliament, at nightfall the police expelled journalists from the Al Jazeera channel from their premises. For several months, he made direct from the garden of the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT).
“We were never given an explanation,” said the Qatari channel’s bureau chief. Nobody dares to tell us when we will find our premises. It becomes a general rule in Tunisia, no one dares to take a decision without the authorization of the president. However, I voted for him in 2019. I believed in it. I even tried to convince my friends. He is a man of integrity, but he failed to resist the deep state and find the means to govern democratically. »
Many people believe, however, that it was absolutely necessary to get out of the party rivalries that have paralyzed Parliament. “But Saïed has gone too far,” confides one of his former ministers. Saïed represents a deft blend of left-wing populism and right-wing populism, he says. It expresses in particular the fed up of Tunisians with regard to the Islamists, today hated in the population for their administrative negligence, and this “market Islam” which has opened the country to the four winds.
But, he says, “he is not a dictator. He has no machine to become one, no support in the army and not even a party”. What worries him the most is that a real potentate, who would not be Saïed, takes advantage of the situation to restore order as Ben Ali did in his time.
The brain drain
How can we be surprised that, according to the latest Arab Barometer report, 45% of Tunisians dream of emigrating? Forget them boat people trying to cross the Mediterranean; 80% of Tunisian expatriates come from the middle and even upper class, explains Hassen Zargouni. “In two years, more than 1,000 doctors and 5,000 engineers have left Tunisia for France, Germany, Canada or the Emirates. It’s a real haemorrhage. »
Moreover, without the massive transfers of funds from Tunisians abroad, up 17% in the first six months of 2022, the country’s finances would be wrecked. Around 2 billion dollars, these transfers represent four times the income from tourism during the same period.
If Saïed is a dictator, he may not be one for long, says a source close to the mysteries of power. “Under his leadership, Tunisia can only go towards an economic and social crisis. The awakening could be brutal. Zied El Hani even believes that it could happen in the spring, or even in January. “Hence the importance of preparing for it,” he says. Last Friday, a spontaneous illegal demonstration took place on the prestigious Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis. It is certainly not the last.