The Libyan tragedy continues, rightly, to dominate our attention but it’s important not to miss the significance of how events in Tunisia and elsewhere are unfolding. An open-ended process, by no means determined, is under way in which liberal democratisation and Islamisation are clearly not the only alternative paths of development for the region.
Protests in Tunisia have not abated since the January Cabinet reshuffle, which ousted former ruling party members from the top ministries but retained Mohamed Ghannouchi as Prime Minister. Mr Ghannouchi had served as Prime Minister for over a decade under the old regime but is considered a technocrat with a particular mastery over economic issues. Many opposition leaders were ready to serve as ministers under him and, indeed, it appears he was acceptable to the middle class segment of the Jasmine Revolution.
Protests from lower strata of society continued, however, leading to occasional violent clashes with the police. Mr Ghannouchi resigned earlier this week in the hope of aiding the transition to democracy. Instead of shoring up the government, however, his resignation was followed by that of other ministers, including the important Minister for Regional Development, Nejib Chebbi, who was not happy with the new choice of Prime Minister.
That ministry – responsible for restoring some economic justice to Tunisia’s development and for cutting down the high unemployment rate – is important in itself. But Mr Chebbi is also considered by some to be perhaps the only potential presidential candidate who can bridge the divide – said to be emerging more starkly in the last few weeks – between the culturally francophone segments of the middle class and arabophone popular society.
That divide threatens to become social polarisation as the country’s instability, economic as much as political, persists. There are plenty of reasons to sympathise with striking workers and their visceral hatred for anything to do with the old regime.
Whether they work for an agricultural enterprise or a bank or a state-owned company, their jobs are under threat because of the corrupt practices that eroded their viability – and they have not held back from saying so, publicly.
However, the various industrial strikes are also making it difficult for any government to engineer the necessary economic recovery. Accompanying the strikes is a growing populism where, for example, a young TV journalist can warn a leading businessman she was interviewing (and whose answers she didn’t like) that he, too, could be subject of a Facebook campaign.
Whether we should be shocked, pleased or merely amused is beside the point. The issue is that (for lack of a better term) the working class dimension of the Tunisian revolution is coming more to the fore. At the moment it seems likely to radicalise politics further. Whether it will be in an Islamist direction or a secular one, we have yet to see.
In Egypt, the army has had to flex its muscle against a spate of strikes as well. Once again, a working class dimension to the protests that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak is emerging more clearly. (It was always there, however: the April 6 movement that organised the January protests was originally formed to organise an April 2010 strike.)
Let us remember that those few politicians who have been charged in court are accused of economic crimes (even the former Interior Minister), largely by using political office to take advantage of privatisation and liberalisation. Whether these trials will enable a new government to institutionalise just, functioning markets or whether they will energise a more radical opposition again is something still to be seen.
And, once radical options – religious or secular – remain on the table, it also remains to be seen, in both countries, whether what we will see unfold in the future is a gradual, step-by-step opening up of the democratic process or, rather, a more faltering development in which periods of civilian rule oscillate with periods of military control.
One can, indeed, survey the entire Middle East and North African (MENA) region and find that the plausible scenarios are broader than the simple dichotomy between a liberal democratisation and Islamisation.
Given the open-ended nature of the process, it is likely the region will emerge with some states being liberal democracies, others moving that way but with the army as a power behind the civil throne, other states may toy with radical options while others might not exercise full control over their territory or borders...
In short, the current protests and uprisings may produce something resembling (in its heterogeneity, not in its political process) like Latin America, rather than eastern Europe. Looking at the implications of that scenario is something we need to start thinking about.
ranierfsadni@europe.com