The Jasmine Revolution: Protests, Corruption, and the Fall of President Ben Ali in Tunisia, Study notes of Political Science

Download The Jasmine Revolution: Protests, Corruption, and the Fall of President Ben Ali in Tunisia and more Study notes Political Science in PDF only on Docsity! Jasmine Revolution The Jasmine Revolution began with protests in Tunisia. The Revolution was named after the national flower. Many believed that the Jasmine Revolution was sparked in December 2010 in the city of Sidi Bouzid by the self-immolation of a young crude vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi (26) who had been trained as a computer technician, but like many of his “friends”, he had been unable to find employment. Instead, he supported himself, his brothers and sisters, by selling fruit and vegetables from a stand. Bouazizi’s stand, unlicensed, which in Tunisia roughly means that he had not paid his required payments. In the morning of December 17, the local police, as they had before, ordered him to disband and leave. But this time, the officer apparently slapped him and insulted his father. Enraged, Bouazizi went to the local governor’s office demanding an appointment and threatening to set himself on fire if he wasn’t heard. When he was turned away, he carried out his threat. The image was picked up on social media and spread across the population which grew enraged and anger that grew into protests which spread across Tunisia over the next few weeks. The self-immolation was the spark for the (Jasmine) Revolution, but there is much more to the story. Tunisia is a relatively young country. It achieved independence in 1956 from France under the leadership of Habib Bourgiba who became the first Tunisian president. The secular (non-religious) party constitutionally democratic rally controlled the country in one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world. In November 1987, Bourgiba was removed from office in concerns of his mental health. Prime Minister Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali assumed the presidency. The Election of President Ben Ali Ben Ali went on to rule the country from 1987-2011. Throughout his rule, family members, in particular the large extended family of his second wife Leila Trabelsi controlled most of the businesses in Tunisia. Some observers expected Ben Ali to retire before the 2009 election, but he had the Constitution changed to allow him to run once again for re-election. He won 89% of the vote in October 2009 in an election that was widely considered to fraudulent. Wikileaks and Tunisia In 2010, Wikileaks published a number of diplomatic cables from the United States, some of which focused on Tunisia. One of them read as follows: “According to Transparency International’s annual survey, an embassy contact’s observations corruption in Tunisia is getting worse. Whether it is cash, services, land, property, or yes even your boat, President Ben Ali’s family is rumored to covet and reportedly gets what it wants. Beyond the stories of the First Family’s shady dealings, Tunisians report encountering low-level corruption as well in interactions with the police, customs, and a variety of government ministries. The economic impact is clear with Tunisian investors fearing the long arm of the family for going new investments, keeping domestic investment rates low and unemployment high. These persistent rumors of corruption coupled with rising inflation and continued unemployment, have helped to fuel instruction and frustration, and have contributed to recent protests in Southwestern Tunisia. With those at the top believed to be the worst offenders and likely to remain in power, there are no checks on the system.” Amnesty International reported in 2010 that government regularly infiltrated human rights or other independent groups in order to uncover the silence, and that citizens faced criminal sanctions under law for contacting foreign organizations and pursuing objectives that were contrary to Tunisia’s “economic security”. Tunisia’s press ranked 164 out of 178 countries in an index of press freedom developed by the organization Reporters Without Borders. The relatively independent for the National Syndicate of Journalists was disbanded when it refused to endorse the candidacy of Ben Ali in the 2009 Presidential elections. A new board was “elected” that quickly endorsed Ben Ali. Tunisian Education and the Economy How could have Tunisia have operated so successfully with diplomatic relations with major powers including the United States, and in particular France, without serious challenges to government authority, despite flagrant human rights abuses in some of the most oppressive practices in an oppressive region? Part of the answer is that despite of the notable absence of protection of the basic civil liberties, Tunisia has been in the past few decades were economically prosperous. Tunisia doesn’t have the kind of oil reserves that exist in its Middle Eastern neighbors, so they promote tourism. Europeans come in droves to vacation on the Mediterranean shore where bikinis were not prohibited. Tourists also traveled to see Carthage and Roman ruins. The economy grew at 5% annually. In a 2000 survey of economic prospects conducted by the World Bank across 131 countries, Tunisia ranked first among African countries and third among Middle Eastern countries. Before 2008, the per capita income of just under $8,000 was one of the highest in North Africa and GDP per capita was also relatively high before the Revolution in 2010. Almost 80% of people in Tunisia own their own home. Tunisia is the only Arab country to ban polygamy. Veils are not required. In fact, they were banned in schools and government buildings in the early 1980s; the ban was revoked in 2011. Occasionally veiled women are still banned from entering schools. More than 80% of adult females are literate. The contraception rate is high, and women make up half the student population, one-third of magistrates, and one-fourth of the diplomatic corps. Tunisians seem to accept what was almost an explicit trade-off. They sacrificed a democratic government, rights to freedom of expression, basic due process rights, and the rights of the accused in return for a government that invested in improving socioeconomic status across Tunisians and supported variety of subsidies. However, in 2008, the global economy slowed and the trade-off between rights and democracy and economic growth seemed less clear. Top-notch schools in Tunisia were graduating thousands of young men and women each year, but many of these individuals remained unemployed. An estimated 1 out of 4 young adults were unemployed in 2010. Unemployment was growing at higher rates among the well-educated. That is, the group whom likely had the highest expectations of employment was actually facing more and more hardship. Inequality had been rising in the last few years leading up to the Arab Spring. Tunisia lacked the natural resources that might have cushioned it from the effect of an economic downturn. When the global economy slowed, tourism slowed. When tourism slowed, the economic health of the overall economy of the country dropped. Decades before when significant economic downturns occurred, well-educated and unemployed Tunisians would immigrate to France, or to other European nations. However, in 2008, European countries began to restrict immigration. Since 2009, thousands have fled to Italy to escape the unrest. Italy is engaged in a long-running dispute with other European Union countries about whether these individuals should be able to travel across borders to other parts of Europe. France’s refusal to admit some of the refugees is a particularly problematic point for Italy since France was a traditionally strong ally of President Ben Ali. As mentioned earlier, the Wikileaks cables had described a dinner that the U.S. Ambassador Gudec and his wife had had with Ben Ali’s daughter Nesrine and her husband El Materi. The cable stated “The opulence with which Nesrine and El Materi lived and their behavior make clear why they and other members of Ben Ali’s family are disliked and even hated by some Tunisians. The excesses of the Ben Ali family are growing.” The cable continued: “El Materi had staff everywhere. There that while Ennahda advocates a moderate Islamic approach in front of a large audience, speakers adopt a more radical rhetoric when speaking to smaller audiences within mosques. Individual party members have been quoted as supporting the mosques, and some party members continue to call themselves Islamists and to describe Ennahda as “God’s party”. The country is reeling from the February 6, 2013 assassination of Chokri Belaid, a prominent opposition figure who served as a strong critic of both former President Ben Ali because of his corruptive and repressive policies, and current party Ennahda because Belaid supported a secular approach. In response to protests over the assassination and after his failure to create a government, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned on February 22, 2013. After Jebali’s resignation, concerns about Ennahda deepened after Moncef Marzouki, Tunisia’s president, and Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s leader, nominated Ali Laarayedh, the Interior Minister, to form a new government. Laarayedh, a founding member of Ennahda, is generally seen as a conservative and is held responsible by many for failing to quell the violence in Tunisia in the two years following the Revolution. There has been much debate among scholars and political observers over whether the commitment to Islamic fundamentalism has always been present in Tunisia, whether if it was part of the fabric of the society and has been present across decades even centuries, or whether it has been imported in recent years from elsewhere as more of a global movement of Islamic fundamentalism. Salafism Salafism has been associated by some observers with littlest, stripped, and pure ethnical approaches to Islam and in the West. As such, it has been with those who espouse violence. Salafis Jihadis advocate Jihad against civilians as a legitimate activity of Islam. Other interpretations of Salafism see it as a larger school of thought that developed in the late 1800s as a reaction to the spread of European modernist ideas, a perspective that is opposed to modernity within Muslim society that does not favor violence. Salafis means predecessor and Salafis Muslims, in this viewpoint, see themselves as closest to the prophet Muhammad, that is, practicing the most authentic, true, and pure vision of Islam. It is opposed in individualism to modernity and philosophy of modernity, but from this perspective, it is conservative, but certainly not considered physically violent. Some observers argued that Salafism was imported in the few years or decade preceding the Tunisian revolution in 2009 as part of a larger movement exemplified by such groups as Al Qaeda, but others argued that a small minority of Tunisia were always inclined for Salafism and that the regime of Ben Ali made it more likely that radical groups would persist or even crashed where more moderate political groups were less likely to be present. Civil Liberty Debates There have been a lot of debates about free speech or the degree in which debates can take place in Tunisia. There have been some cases of censorship. Olfa Riahi was charged with criminal defamation when she posted an item on her blog accusing Tunisia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs of misusing public money and having an extramarital affair. A military tribunal sentenced Ayoub Massoudi, former advisor to Interim President Marzouki, to a suspended prison sentence of four months for imputing the representation of the army. He had accused the army chief of staff of dereliction of duty for failing to notify him soon enough of the plan to extradite the former Libyan Prime Minister to Libya. Two bloggers, Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji, were sentenced in the spring of 2012 to seven and a half years in prison for publishing material offensive to Islam. Weld El 15 was sentenced to two years in prison for insulting police after he posted a song entitled “Police are Dogs”. He had been sentenced in March 2013 for two years and he emerged from hiding in June 2013 in hopes of getting a more lenient sentence at a retrial. The retrial produced the same verdict and sentence. Two artists, Nadia Jelassi and Mohamed Ben Salem were arrested for art that was seen as insulting to Islam. The sculptures of veiled women among a bed of rocks were interpreted by Salafist protesters as advocating the stoning of Muslim women. On May 3, Nabil Karoui, the owner of a television station was fined about $1,500 American Dollars for broadcasting an animated television series Persepolis which was denounced as blasphemy to some Islamists. The film was based on Marjane, Satrapi’s graphic novel published in the United States as The Complete Persepolis. The book was banned in several Chicago public schools because of what parents and administrators saw such strong content. It is the autobiographical story of a young Iranian woman. It was interpreted by Tunisian courts as being hostile to Islam. Government has taken an action against violence committed by Salafis. Six Salafis were sentenced to five years in prison for torching an important Sufis shrine in October 2012. Sufi is defined, by those who follow it, as the inner mystical dimension of Islam. Individuals who follow Sufi belong to groups or congregations formed around a master. They see themselves as the original, true, pure, and real version of Islam, but they’re opposed by Salafists and Mohave Muslims. Sufis have a number of shrines at which they prey. Dozens of those have been destroyed since 2011 most by arson. Many believe that Salafis Muslims, who generally oppose shrines, are responsible. In some cases, Salafis Muslims have attacked shrines. Veils are not required, in fact, they were banned from schools and government buildings in the early 1980s, and the ban was revoked in 2011. Occasionally, veiled women are still banned in schools, but there have been protests against one such incident in April 2012. The Union and the Phosphate Industry Another source of contiguous politics is the phosphate industry. Phosphate is one the natural resources that Tunisia does have. Before the Revolution, Tunisia was the 5th largest exporter of phosphate in the world. Twenty-five percent of the Tunisian economy was driven by phosphate, but the central regions in which phosphate is produced are much poorer than the coastal regions. Inconsequently, the phosphate industry has faced significant slowdowns in production. In 2010, the main phosphate company produced 8 million tons, but in 2012, less than 3 tons were produced. However, shortly before Ben Ali fled the country, the union gave up its support for him, and it began to serve as one of the few institutions within civic society which could help sustain the 2011 protest movement. It has done so for the following two years, but it has been a challenge for the union to strike a balance. The union has organized several regional and national strikes to protest such developments, as the government including only the 2011, and not the 2008 protesters and not their families in reparations and compensations program. They also organized strikes in response to Belaid’s assassination as well as protests, but strikes and protests also mean slowing down phosphate production, which in turn, may hurt workers particularly in Gafsa. It means an overall slowdown to the tourism industry, and Tunisia is very dependent on both the phosphate and tourism. The union is a secular organization that opposes the Salafis movement. In January 2013, Ennahda members were appointed to key positions in the largest mining plant. There was civil unrest, and the union faced the challenge of working with the Ennahda dominated government while at the same time stressing the union’s philosophical and practical position of supporting workers’ rights. Civil Unrest The country still faces a good deal of political violence and civil unrest. In September 2012, the U.S. Embassy was attacked by crowds in response to a video made in the United States that was seen as mocking the prophet Muhammad. As noted before, political violence struck in February 2013 when Belaid was assassinated. In response to the assassination and his inability to form a government, the Prime Minister resigned his position late that same year. Additional protest broke out in May 2013 when the government prohibited the radical ring of the Salafis movement from holding their annual meeting. Also, the government has discovered some terrorist activities in the mountainous area near the border with Algeria. At least two soldiers have been killed. The government has disbanded as least one cell of Al Quada. Many observers believe that the discovery of terrorist cells has increased the Ennahda government’s interest in cracking down on Salafis who may engage in violence. Conclusion Tunisians have a great deal of pride in their country. They see the Revolution as a demonstration of the power of the people. Certainly, the overthrow of Ben Ali after decades in power was significant. The progress the country has made toward democracy, in a diverse and pluralistic society, has been nothing short but outstanding and clearly has had some effect on other countries in the region. There is much to be accomplished in Tunisia economically, socially, religiously (in terms of religious divisions), and politically (establishing the basic political structure). The constitution that officials optimistically said would be written by the fall of 2012 is still being worked on. A fair amount of violence and struggles over the economic foundation and religious adversity, and the state’s approach to civil liberties are all points of contention. The rebellion that developed into a revolution that spread beyond Tunisia’s borders has taken unpredictable paths. It continues in some ways and there are many possible outcomes that could come in the coming years, months, weeks, and even days that could have an effect on their society.