The winter of Discontent
By Colin Kilkelly*
Morocco News Tribune
Political Analysis
As some predicted the Arab Spring is turning to winter. The assassination of Chokri Belaid, a Tunisian opposition leader, who was shot down in the morning as he left his house to travel to work is a dark moment.
Tunis is not Benghazi where killings occur almost every week. Tunisia has always been a peaceful country and its citizens who turned out in mass protest against the assassination are a model of civilized culture, which has always bridged the gap between western secularism and Islam so that the two could live side by side.
Despite Ben Ali’s repressive government, which denied Tunisian’s (and the occasional visiting journalist) the right to freedom of thought and expression, Tunisians kept their dignity and survived the repression.
Hitler and his propaganda minister Goebbels believed in the power of the great lie. Lie and pretend it’s the truth. Stalin believed this and the Soviet Union dominated its eastern European satellites perpetuating the lie right up till the wall came down in 1989. Talking with my Polish friend Bogdan whom I met in Bahrain in the early 90′s made me understand something of what it was like to live under the big lie.
Some twenty years earlier I had served as an officer in Nato based in Germany and we feared imminent nuclear war, which would push us into the sea somewhere off Belgium.
Later I travelled in Eastern Europe for business and learnt how the repressive system worked and dominated people’s lives. So when I arrived in Tunisia, I recognized the same repression immediately: Young people thrown into jail for surfing the internet. No independent newspapers, no freedom of thought or expression.
Islamists such as Ennhada were victims of this repression, but having been trusted by the electorate to respect the rights and freedoms won by Tunisians following Independence, they have proved unworthy of that trust. They have allowed armed Salafists to rampage largely unchecked stealing the revolution and its ideals from the young who rose up against Ben Ali.
Following on from the Salafists who were condemned internationally the Committee for the Preservation of the Revolution, an Ennhada linked militia, began to attack and break up the meetings of secular political parties.
The comparison with the breakup of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1930′s where armed gangs used violence to overthrow democracy is apt. Over the weekend before Chokri Belaid’s death, meetings of his and other secular parties were broken up by the same bearded men.
Chokri Belaid told Tunisian TV the night before he was killed, “There are groups inside Ennahda inciting violence. Rachid Ghannouchi considers the league to be the conscience of the nation, so the defense of the authors of violence is clear. All those who oppose Ennahda become the targets of violence.”
The same pattern occurred when the Minister of Interior was called asking him for protection and he did nothing. The police intervened only after the event despite appeals for help. Rachid Ghannouchi condemned Belaid’s assassination but he has said different things to different audiences too many times to be credible any longer.
President Moncef Marzouki has made the error of appeasing Islamists rather than standing up strongly enough for individual rights and freedoms. He has also lost credibility in the eyes of the electorate .The Troika itself like Ennhada has been undermined by its failure to resolve very high unemployment throughout the population (750,000 unemployed).
This is a warning for the whole of the Maghreb where unemployment is high and everyone is facing the challenge of global recession. The primary causes of the changes we are witnessing in the Maghreb are economic rather than religious. The problem is that the Islamists appear to lack the necessary expertise to begin to address the economic issues.
Chokri Belaid must have known his life was in danger but he chose to stop living a lie and stand up to organized violence against liberty of expression. We must salute his courage and his sacrifice for freedom of expression and human rights. It is a lesson that all governments in the Maghreb should take note as freedom of expression and respect for the individual appears to be becoming more restricted.
As Ennhada rejects Hamadi Jebali’s call for a government of technocrats and opposition parties withdraw from the National Constituent Assembly, the situation in Tunisia hangs in the balance and the outcome is relevant to all of its neighbors.
*Colin Kilkelly specializes in the Maghreb and is based in Marrakech, Morocco. He has worked in Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania. Previously he has lived and worked in Pakistan where he was Regional Director for South Magazine, and has visited frequently since then. He interviewed President Musharraf on 3 occasions for Pakistan Special Reports in FIRST Magazine, and has written for Blue Chip Magazine based in Islamabad. He recently wrote the UKTI (UK Government Department for Trade and Investment) folders for commercial investment into Morocco, Pakistan and Libya. He is also a correspondent for the North Africa Journal. He is a member of the Middle East Association (MEA) London.
All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Morocco News Tribune’s editorial policy.