Elections results: New Assembly, New Tunisia

The results for the Tunisian elections are revealed, region after region. As expected, Rached Ghannouchi’s Ennahdha is granted about 35-40% of the votes, about 16-17% for Ettakatol and 15-16% for Moncef Marzouki’s CPR. The three main political forces of the country as thus one religious party and two secular parties, in a configuration where none of them can be a majority alone. Together, they will be in charge of writing the new Constitution of Tunisia.

The severe defeat of PDP and PDM parties, traditional secular left, can be understood by the fact that among all secular parties, Tunisians favored the ones that showed an interest for Tunisians daily life problems and a will to conciliate with islamists. Indeed, PDM and PDP main campaign effort was about ‘countering ennahdha’, thus giving to Tunisians the impression of them being nothing else than parties interested in he political game more than they are in the country’s future.

The state of the things might well be the best option for Tunisia, where an equilibrum between religious and secular forces would be the best guarantee of simultaneous stability and progress. After 60years of forced secularism, a full secular power would have had a taste of continuation and a full islamist would have been at odds with the tunisian society. Also, Tunisians have been ruled in the past only by governments originating from a unique party. Tunisia is thus experiencing multipartism for the first time of its History.

One point though remains unclear: the very high scores of Hechmi Hamdi in Sidi Bouzid, the place where the revolution was born. Hechmi Hamdi, director of the London-based TV channed Al Mustaqilah, close to Ben Ali in the past and who presents himself as a moderate islamist, gained up to 90% of the votes in some polling stations. The ISIE (who organized and managed the elections) should investigate on the possibility of violation of the elections code.

We can from now forsee the new constitution that’ll come out of this Assembly: Islam will  remain religion of State, although the primary source of law won’t be Islamic law. A strong focus on Human Rights, together with a presevation of freedom of speech and opinion will be granted. The state will be hopefully bound to a stronger social role towards citizens and a better protection of the weakest people in our country. The hardest part of the work will be certainly to rethink and reform justice.

These first elections were the first step towards our new Tunisia. They were successfully held and that was our first victory over tyranny: to have not fallen into chaos. Now, we are ready to work hard to make of the New Tunisia a successful common project.

Tunisian Elections: Blue is my Finger and Free is my Voice

Today is a bright day for our beloved Tunisia. Today we show the world, and most important we show to ourselves, that we are free people. Our voting card is our weapon to defend ou freedom. Whatever the result will be, the victory for Tunisia would have been to organize fair, free and organized elections only 9 months after the end of a dictatoship. Tunisians are massicerly participating: the waiting queues are reported to be sometimes 200meters long and the ewaiting time sometimes near to 2hours.

As an expat, I voted in Geneva, in the Hotel Warwick. We were given clear instructions and besides the organizing staff there was extenal observers and I could count not less than five acredicted oubservers in the room.

On the technical side, after droping the ballot in the box, we had to soak a finger in a little bottle containing blue ink. The pictures of Tunisian citizens proudly showing their blue finger to the camera are flourishing by hundreds on the internet.  Of course, I will not resist to the pleasure to show you mine as well.

Blue is my Finger and Free is my Voice

Can #occupyWallStreet make a real difference?

As the Occupy Wall Street movement grows and enhances other occupy movements in the United States (occupy Boston, etc) and in the world (as far as in Japan, Taiwan), I was remembering a note I wrote on May 2011 called To all the Tahrir Squares in the World where I was saying that with the Spanish Indignados unrest movement inspired by the Tunisian/Egyptian revolutions, we are seeing the beginning of a global phenomenon spreading much beyond the Arab World. Everywhere, the same basic demand: asking for a fairer world.

As a citizen of the world, there is one thing I always admired in Americans: their talent in putting the right words on things. In french we would say they have le sens de la formule, meaning ‘the sense of the right formula/sentence’. I don’t know who said first ‘We are the 99%’ , but I think it sums it up perfectly.

The ‘occupy’ movements demands are noble, they are right. But can they make a real difference? After all, the spanish Indignados movement did not result in reforms or change in the state of the things in Spain. The Greek protests did not prevent the new rules of the game dictated by the CEB and IMF. Things just carry on like they were, except for the traffic jam caused by the protests. If it is true these movements have raised the awareness in the Western World on the unnatural financial order in the world that does not even benefit to population of the rich countries, they yet fail in having any concrete impact on decision-makers. The problem maybe of these movements in Europe was that although the demands were clear and fair, the protests did not challenge the establishment. In other words: because we all understood the unrest will never reach point of a real physical revolution even  if the demands are not fulfilled. In the worst case the young people will abstain at the next elections and that, the decision makers know it. Politicians are keen to do a lot of things to ensure people voting for them, dismantling a dysfunctioning system that feeds them is not one of them.

Same goes for the Occupy Wall Street movement: it can make a difference only if the 1% understand that the 99% will put their fight above everything else and anything else, including themselves. The crucial point for the Arab Spring is that governments are falling or shaking because they understood that people are ready to die for their ideas and that everytime somebody dies, the crowd does not diminish in size but augments. Because they know that from Friday to Friday, the rage of the protesters becomes more and more physically impossible  to contain for police/armed forces.

It is not about being violent during the protests, it is about making clear that even if a crowd is met by violence – and we are not talking about pepper spray, we are talking about another level of violence that can cost lives – the crowd will still continue and in the contrary they will glorify the sacrifice of every single life. The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions succeeded because even if the protesters where peaceful and unarmed, the repressive forces were forced to give up, because they were totally out of control of the situation. Because they knew that they will be unable to stop the crowd marching towards the ministries or presidential palaces at the risk of their lives.

Now, the Occupy Wall Street movement, if it really wants to change the world and impact on the financial world, should understand that nothing concrete will happen until the 1% really feel threatened from inside their ivory tower by the 99% that are ready to bring down the tower, and sit on everything that is in it. It is not about sending death threats to these people, it is about making their outrageous lifestyle and actions impossible to continue. In that country where a very few people managed to send thousands of young Americans to go get killed in Irak just for oil, it is already a fact the of Occupy Wall Street movement is opposing nothing else but people that really consider owning the lives of Americans and that will not hesitate to sacrifice all what it needs to maintain the system as it is.

To occupy wall street protesters, I know I am nobody to give my ‘advice’: if you really mean to change things, push for occupying Wall Street for real, and make understand that you are ready to physically sacrifice for it (not that events have to turn violent, but note that in front of you, you have a lot of people ready to do anything legal and illegal to satisfy their greed). Make understand that your intention is not only shouting against capitalism outside buildings in a park nearby, but that you will interrupt the financial activities inside. Only when the 1% inside the buildings of Wall Street will understand that the 99% outside have no upper limit in their determination to perturb the financial markets, they will consider reforms of the financial system. Occupy Wall Street can be a real difference, give yourself the means for it to happen.

Maspero massacre: I am an Egyptian and I will always stand against brutality

For all the victims of the Massacre of Maspero: Rest in Peace. May God offer you an afterlife worth a million earthly lives. Ina lillah wa ina ileihi raje’oon.

For the murderers, whoever they are: Shame, eternal shame on you. May Allah put you one day in front of your horrible deeds.

I am a Muslim Egyptian and I will firmly stand against those who want to divide our people, against those who attack my brothers and sisters, wether they are Coptics or Muslims. We are one people and nobody will spread fitna among us.

 

October 6th 1981, the day “my” dictator was shot

I don’t remember that day; I wasn’t born. My mother remembers she was 8-months-and-something pregnant of me and my father remembers he was literally panicked the delivery could happen at any moment. I am their first child, it is as unexperienced parents-to-be they lived that particular October 6th 1981.

They lived far from their homelands, in Switzerland, and it is with this strange obsession specific to the expats they were following as much as they could what was happening in Tunisia (my mother’s country) and in Egypt (my father’s). In 2011, it is difficult to imagine what means ‘following news’ at a time when there was no Internet, no twitter, no mobile phones and hardly any landlines in our families back home, no satellite TV; in fact no TV at all at my parents’ place. A bit of radio, newspapers (in some places in Switzerland you could get a few arabic newspapers with 3days delay), and mostly news from other expats were coming  back from travel, that heard something from somebody, that has a personnal story to tell. I don’t know by which of these means they knew the Egyptian dictator Anouar Al-Sadat was shot during the traditional military parade of October 6th.

All I know for being told the story thousands of times by my parents, is that my father rushed to buy a TV immediately when he heard the news of Sadat’s death.  Years later, everytime I hear the name of the dictator I imagine a younger version of my father trying to get that new TV (that now would look like an antique) working and a younger version of my mother, pregnant on the couch trying to give suggestions on how to do. I was born 10 days after Sadat’s death, on October 16th. My father never forgets to mention that October 81 brought many changes in his life: a daughter and a TV.

The world remembers Sadat with nostalgy for his peace efforts with Israel, but Egyptians don’t. This hate of Egyptians for the dictator is nothing because of Israel, but because Sadat is the synonyme for corruption, poverty, jails, arbitrary detentions, torture, expensive bread. Sadly ironic to think that a man that was so injust was awarded with a Peace Nobel Prize.

My father migrated to Switzerland because his engineering studies, in the Sadat years Egypt, were not enough to find a job and grant a decent a living for him, his two parents and his 6 sisters. Hadn’t he migrated, he wouldn’t have met my mother and I would have never “been”. Sadat, “my” dictator in a way.

October 6th 2011, 30 years later, Egypt is trialing another dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Age of blood is over for our country and we will be firmly standing to avoid it to ba back.

Steve Jobs and Wangari Maathi

Think different.
Steve Jobs

It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference.
Wangari Maathi

Could you imagine two people more different than Wangari Maathi and Steve Jobs? A Kenyan woman and an American man.  A Peace Nobel Prize Winner environmental activist and a billionnaire anti-conformist visionary businessman. A lifetime struggle standing alone against injustice and a worldwide netword made of millions of little apples. One voice for women’s rights and one face for friendly capitalism.

Wangari Maathi and Steve Jobs have nothing in common; the only reason for them to be cited here in the same sentence is the randomness of life that made them pass away 10days apart defeated by the same ennemy, cancer. We can speak long about their legacies. We can also debate long about the unethical business practices that were hidden behind the young and innovative design of Apple products.

But maybe when it comes to the death of individuals, regardless of talent, origin or success, we should just keep silent for a minute and remember that at the end, we walk different paths to reach a same destination.

Samir Feriani and Kamel Morjane remind us that the Tunisian Revolution is a continuous struggle

Samir Feriani is a policeman that got arrested after he published in a newspaper names of people holding key positions in the Interior Ministry involved in the shooting of peaceful protestors during the Tunisian revolution. After a trial, he was released last week. His release was seen by the optimists as a victory for the Revolution, the others say that his arrest, regardless of the result of the trial, was already a failure in itself for the justice of a country that aims to be democratic.

Kamel Morjane is the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, currently involved in the scandal of the 3 years diplomatic passeports issued to Ben Ali and his family on January 16th, two days after they fled to Saudi Arabia. He held a press conference where he explained that in his point of view, he just followed the law. The passeports were cancelled since, but the exact extent of Kamel Morjane is still unclear.  He runs with his party ‘Al Mobadara’ for the coming elections, although he was a member of the Ben Ali government.Many disapprove the fact that a former Ben Ali minister, although apparently not involved in criminal affairs during or before the Revolution, can still participate to the political life of Tunisia.

Samir Feriani and Kamel Morjane represent well this strange transitional period in Tunisia; they remind us Revolution is a continuous struggle. The remnants of the old regime still have a strong hold on the affairs of the state, strong enough to interfere with justice in particular. Not that the Revolution ‘failed’, like we hear sometimes; cleaning a rusty machine takes time, and the improvements are already beyond the reasonable predictions that were made at the beginning of the transitional period. But still a lot has to be done that can’t be delayed anymore. In particular, justice has to be reminded to its primary function. In the country dozens of the former regime heads like Morjane are moving freely, unworried, while thousands of simple citizens like Feriani are still under the threat of trials, harrassment or other means of pressure when they use their right to disagree.

To push reforms forward, let’s use our deadliest weapons: our pens and our voting cards.