On December 17 Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor, attempted self-immolation in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid after police confiscated his produce cart. To hammer in the message about the criminal nature of unauthorized hawking, a policewoman slapped him and spat in his face. The next day protests broke out as hundreds of unemployed took to the streets, demanding bread and work. The protests quickly spread to other cities and reached the capital in a week’s time. Incidentally, the local media tried to hush this up. It was President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali himself who broke the informational blockade: he dismissed the local mayor and the abovementioned policewoman and came to visit the victim in the hospital. To be more exact, he saw a dying, swathed body [Bouazizi died on January 4 – Ed.]. One observer made a prophetic comment: in reality, Ben Ali is looking at his dying presidency. Meanwhile, police had already shot dead dozens of protesters — adding one more demand to those of bread and work: “Stop killing us!” Ben Ali tried to appease the people; on January 10 he promised to create 300,000 jobs; on January 12 he fired the interior minister and ordered all those arrested to be released. On January 13 he promised to slash prices for bread, milk, and sugar. The next day he declared a state of emergency and, having left the prime minister in charge, fled to Saudi Arabia. At first Ben Ali wanted to fly to his beloved France, but the latter unexpectedly refused to receive him, even though two days before the French Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie suggested that French police forces could help police in Tunisia “appease the situation.” Naturally, President Nicolas Sarkozy felt ill at ease: as recently as a year ago he lauded Ben Ali for “progress in freedom.” The European Union “woke up” after Ben Ali’s flight and, almost a month after the protest actions had begun, condemned the “disproportional use of force.” European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek tried to apologize for this silence by saying that “democratic aspirations of citizens will never remain unheard or unanswered.” It should be noted, for fairness’ sake, that in the last days before Ben Ali was overthrown Mr. Buzek’s ears were full of the Belarusian opposition’s chants in Brussels. As police were killing dozens of pro-democracy Tunisians, Buzek was worried about the “lack of democratic legitimacy in the government of Belarus” and suggested punishing Lukashenko by denying Belarus access to the Olympics and world championships. At last, US President Barack Obama commented on the events by praising the “courage and dignity” of the Tunisian people. Incidentally, his predecessor, George Bush Jr., used to praise Ben Ali for “[his efforts in the] war on terrorism, economic progress, freedom of the press, and free elections.”
The people’s uprising, dubbed the Jasmine Revolution, was not at all in Washington’s plans; this prompted Condoleezza Rice to speak of a “global democratic revolution” and to cite the examples of Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, and Lebanon. Moreover, while publicly declaring friendship to an ally, Washington did not resort to tacit encouragement or funding of the opposition and the chosen successor, as it did, for example, in the case of Egypt. So Washington is now racking its brains over how it could overlook the collapse of the much-hyped “Tunisian stability” and who they should support in the ongoing struggle for power.
Relations between Tunisia and the European Union were also cloudless. The latter highly valued Ben Ali for his cooperation in the struggle against illegal migration from Africa, as well as for political stability and a highly favorable treatment of European capital. The EU is Tunisia’s largest trade partner; the two sides signed an association agreement in the mid-1990s, and it was widely believed last year that Tunisia was on the verge of being granted “privileged partnership” status.
Of course, one human rights organization or another would occasionally place Ben Ali on the list of “dictators” or “enemies of the press” (incidentally, he found himself there next to Kuchma year after year). However, Tunis was not concerned about this (sometimes venerable French institutions lauded the president “for developing democracy”), and European capitals remained unperturbed by reports that the Tunisian police had beaten up and arrested a hundred demonstrators.
The question is why — given these achievements and compliments from leading democracies — the populace became unhappy under Ben Ali. All the more so that the protesters did not demand that he resign until the last moment. Nor did they make any political demands at first: they only wanted bread and work. Besides, he won almost 90 percent of votes in what the US and the EU called “fair and competitive” elections in 2009 [though many organizations contested this, notably Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists – Ed.]. Ben Ali ruled the country for 23 years after the legendary founder of the republic, Habib Bourguiba, had peacefully “relinquished power.” Officially, Ben Ali called together a council of doctors, who inconsolably diagnosed the leader as having “senile dementia” and the successor somehow managed to persuade him to write a letter of resignation.
After gaining independence, Tunisia began, under Bourguiba’s leadership, to build “Arab socialism” based on development of the public sector, industrialization, cooperative movement in the countryside, and restriction of big capital. And, admittedly, the country was making tangible progress. The economic troubles that emerged in the 1980s were caused not so much by the socioeconomic model (which continues to work successfully, for example, in Syria) as by inefficient management. What also made itself felt was the cult of President Bourguiba, who lost a sense of reality due to megalomania, flattery, and venerable age — in other words, he took to “Khrushchev-style voluntarism.”
The West immediately dubbed the arrival of Ben Ali as “zinestroika” (an analogy to Gorbachev’s perestroika). He introduced a multiparty system, set a considerable quota in parliament for the opposition, and even funded the latter’s election campaigns. Pursuing his new economic course, the president relied on the then voguish IMF-supported neo-liberal recipe which demanded, above all, privatization, attraction of foreign investments, freedom for foreign capital, and reduction of social expenses. Tunisia became “the IMF’s best pupil” and took higher and higher places with every passing year in all kinds of rankings of economic freedom, competitiveness, etc. Last September’s IMF report extols Tunis for smooth sailing across the world financial crisis and successful structural reforms, and subtly hints at the danger of inflation and unemployment, and… advises to cancel food subsidies for the populace. But, as the experience of many countries, now including Tunisia, shows, the vast majority of individuals are in fact unable to enjoy the fruits of a liberal market economy. Yet it is they who become responsible for the repayment of foreign debts and interest-bearing loans. The state eschews an equitable redistribution of the publicly-made product that fully satisfies the “new elite,” the latter reaping the abovementioned fruits.
This (reverse) side of the Tunisian medal is amply revealed in the US ambassador’s 2008 cables made public by WikiLeaks. The country is territorially divided among numerous families and the no less numerous friends of Ben Ali himself and his wife Leila. To be able to run even a very small business, one must regularly pay bribes. If you want to get a job at a factory, connections or bribes are necessary, too. The same applies to university admission, no matter how good your test scores. This is on the grassroots level. Much more serious things occur on the top. Every member of the presidential clan controls a certain territory, where he “collects tribute.” Paying taxes is out of the question. (The ambassador gives the following example: a governor once complained to the president about his distant relative, after which he beat up the old man right in his office room.) Foreign companies know only too well that if they want to get the most-favored-firm status, they should take somebody from the president’s or the First Lady’s clan as a partner. The “elite” is actively bought up land and real estate. So when you read all this, you feel like correcting the title of a book by Ben Ali’s abovementioned counterpart: “Ukraine is Tunisia Rather than Russia.” Besides, according to the ambassador’s cables, the morality and life-style of the Tunisian “elite” are strikingly recognizable. The growing demands are not confined to smuggled posh limousines: two nephews of the First Lady have stolen the yacht of a French tycoon. Incidentally, Mrs. Leila had the reputation of a major philanthropist: her project of a “Carthage school” closely resembles, in terms of result, that of a well-known “hospital of the future.”
It must be clear now why the desperate act of the abovementioned 26-year-old Bouazizi became the spark that reduced the much-hyped “Tunisian stability” to ashes. Demonstrations of solidarity with Tunisia under the slogan “We Are Next in Line” are already taking place in Egypt and Algeria, the latter having just been rocked with similar “bread riots” (the government managed to appease the populace with essential cuts in food prices, but will this last long?). Discussing the Jasmine Revolution, Arab bloggers call it “the beginning of a worldwide anti-capitalist revolution.” And here is quite an interesting comment by a Turkish Twitter user: “I support a democratic change of government, but as I have just come back from Ukraine, I hope Tunisians know what to do next.”
*Harissa is a Tunisian hot sauce whose main ingredients are chili peppers and garlic.
