Tunisia, a little country making History

Almost one year after the dramatic immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi, Tunisia makes once again History, by appointing Moncef Marzouki as president. Elected by the Constitutive Assembly to be the transitionnal leader of Tunisia, he is a doctor and life long human rights activist, intellectual (not less than 20 published books on medical ethics, public health, human rights and political analysis of the Arab world), exiled in France for the last 10 years; we couldn’t imagine a more suitable person for a president. He highly contrasts with the rest of Arab leaders, and represents the standards we will ask for not only for our nation but for the whole MENA region.

The first speech of President Marzouki was beautiful, and as a Tunisian I was touched to see my president crying when he mentionned the martyrs of the revolution and praying for the Libyans, Syrians, Yemenis and Palestinians. I was also happy to see him wearing a burnous, the traditionnal Tunisian cloak, symbolizing in a simple and beautiful way our North African identity.

Today, like many Tunisians I am optimistic for my country. I think we are going the right way. We still have a lot of hard work to do, especially regarding the economical and labour market reforms; may the future be bright and brighter  for Tunisia.

 

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.