The Arab Spring’s First Elected President – Almost

By Kacem Jlidi

Moncef Marzouki

January 14^th, Ben Ali fled the country bringing an end to 55 years of dictatorship since the French occupation. Today, December 12^th, Tunisia is having a new president: Moncef Marzouki , a Human Rights activist and leader of the secular center-left Congress for the Republic (CPR) party; making him the third President in the history of the Tunisian Republic, and the first president democratically elected in the post-revolution era.

The Constituent Assembly of Tunisia, a body elected on October 23^rd to govern the country and draft a new constitution, elected Marzouki as the President of the Tunisian Republic, with 155 votes for, 3 against, and 42 blank votes. Blank votes were the result of a boycott from the opposition parties, who considered the new mini constitution of the country as an undemocratic one.

His appointment follows a week of animated debate within the Constituent Assembly focused on the formation of Tunisia’s provisional constitution.

The Constituent Assembly had opened the floor last week for presidential candidacy according to the conditions of interim law related to the powers’ division which indicates that the Tunisian President must fulfill the following conditions: “To be a Tunisian Muslim, non-carrier of a foreign nationality, born to a Tunisian Father and Mother and to be an adult of 35 years old at least”.

The adopted constitution, containing 26 articles, is being called the “mini-constitution,” and it delineates the roles and entitlements of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the interim government. The document will expire following the administration of general elections, potentially within the year.

It should be highlighted here that the Congress for the Republic, has came second in the October 23^rd votes, collecting 29 seats out of 217 seats at the Constituent Assembly had made a coalition with the first comer Ennahda Islamist Party and the 3^rd comer Ettakatol led by Mustfa Ben Jaafer, currently the head of the Constituent Assembly.

What makes the presidential appointment not such a happy news for the Tunisians, even though many claims that he has a clean past is that the coalition in the constituent assembly’s majorities: Ennahda with 89 seats, CPR with 29 seats and Ettakatol with 20 seats had agreed already to appoint Moncef Marzouki as a president.

The voting requires a 50%+1 results while the coalition enjoys a fair majority not be annoyed with that rule.

With the Constituent Assembly led by Ettakatol’s leader Musfa Ben Jaafer and the country presidential gone for the CPR’s leader Moncef Marzouki; it’s now presumed that he will appoint Hamadi Jebali from the Ennahda Islamist movement tomorrow. The late will be in charge of announcing the composition of the cabinet.

Myriam, a Tunisian student studying Political Sciences in Paris summed up the discontent of MArzouki’s appointment in the following tweet which translates to: “interim government is limited by no frame of time, the executive board is not elected and the constitution isn’t proposed for a referendum. Welcome to democracy”.

Tweet by @MyriamAT

Moncef Marzouki:

He was born 7 July 1945, 66 years old. He studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg (France). Returning to Tunisia in 1979, he founded the Center for Community Medicine in Sousse and the African Network for Prevention of Child Abuse, also joining Tunisian League for Human Rights.

When the government cracked down violently on the Islamist Ennahda Movement in 1991, Marzouki confronted Tunisian President Ben Ali calling on him to adhere to the law.

In 1993, Marzouki was a founding member of the National Committee for the Defense of Prisoners of Conscience, but he resigned after it was taken over by supporters of the government. He was arrested on several occasions on charges relating to the propagation of false news and working with banned Islamist groups.

He subsequently founded the National Committee for Liberties. He became President of the Arab Commission for Human Rights and as of 17 January 2011continues as a member of its Executive Board.

In 2001, he founded the Congress for the Republic party. This was banned in 2002, but Marzouki moved to France and continued running it. (Wikipedia).

Tunisian Cyber-activists at a left political meeting

A bloggers and cyber-activists meeting was organized by the Renewal Movement (Harakat Ettajdid) this Saturday, April 23^rd in their offices in Liberty Avenue, Tunis.

This happened to be my first attendance to a meeting organized by a political party. I certainly liked the fact of their awareness of the power of social media and their approach to cyber-activists and bloggers. Separate meetings with NGOs representatives, artists and intellectuals took place before this one.

Attendees of the meeting were mostly young bloggers but there were also lawyers, jurists, professors, students and different professionals who showed up by curiosity to be part of this meeting. My guess this shows the eager desire to learn about the online world, the different social media platforms and the Tunisian blogosphere.

The Movement of Renewal, which is an ex-communist party founded in September 14^th, 1993 and is now a centre-left political party in Tunisia led by Ahmed Brahim.

The primary objective of the meeting was to support the Democratic Front which is a front united around common values ​​of political parties, associations and militants. Such a front will be very useful in the elections of the Constitutional Council and the drafting of the constitution.

Introduction speeches called for a colorful union to join all efforts to start building Tunisia, improve the economic situation, fight all the distractions and focus on the constitutional elections to be held in July 24^th.

To my understanding, speakers expressed exaggerated phobia from the Nahdha party and took the time to express irrelevant boring stories to some extent. They also emphasized the huge number of supporters of this Islamic political party and their respected level of organization _unlike other political parties which would influence the upcoming elections.

Part of the strength of Al Nahda is its use of religious/coranic speech wish appeal to many people and that helps them connect with a lot of people and gain sympathy and support.

It was at this meeting to decide how to lobby, as activists of the web, on the progressive political parties. One of the ways to support the Front is to block the fundamentalists. The second, which is also important because it reflects the will of the parties is to bring together a constituency that would defend the achievements of modernist achievement of Tunisia.

Bloggers expressed the lack of credibility, professionalism and objectivism of the traditional media (print, audio and audio-visual) and called to unify the efforts and act towards one direction instead of shattered voices in different corners of the web.

The idea of using electronic media to act as a cons weight got emphasized; a collaborative platform such as nawaat was suggested.

A second idea of establishing a radio for NGOs was proposed to give voice for the civil society and help raise awareness and reach more people than those encountered in separate seminars or activities.

But as an urgent action, attendees agreed on making Thursday, April 28th the day of a “Civil Action Note” where cyber-activists and internet users in general would put the Tunisian flag instead of their profile picture and publish a status or a post in support of the Democratic Front.

2 months before the elections, where is Tunisia?

Our revolution was led by the young people, through social media, driven by unhappiness and unemployment. But now the country is being led by dinosaurs.

Our new prime minister, Beji Caid Sebsi, is 85-years-old. It is true that he is respected – he defied former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in the past – but the perception remains that there has been no real change. Most of the people are not happy with the transitional government.No ex-ministers have been arrested – one is even starting his own political party – and there have been no obvious attempts to bring Ben Ali or his family to justice. Finally, this week, the authorities finally said they want to try him on 18 different charges, but we haven’t seen any convincing efforts. Everyone is talking about the huge amounts of money that Ben Ali’s family had all over the world, but when are the authorities going to bring this money back to help the country?

The secret police has been disbanded but the same people who were responsible for the snipers who killed protestors during the revolution, the same people who carried out acts of torture, are still free. Instead of bringing these people to justice, the transitional government seems more concerned with forming committees to observe what people are expressing on Facebook.

Recently, a couple of people were briefly arrested for setting up Facebook pages calling for another revolution and accused of promoting violence and chaos in he country. All of these small details add to a sense of discontent.

And it is also clear that our economy is in real trouble. Tourism has not even begun to recover. There are some foreigners here but they are mostly journalists or aid workers, not people on holiday. Some roads here in Tunis are still blocked, army vehicles can still be seen everywhere. Shops close by eight or nine in the evening, not because there is still a curfew but because people are simply afraid of being out late. You hear stories everywhere of people being robbed. When I take a taxi, the drivers complain that even they don’t dare to go out on the streets too late. Everyone is still afraid.

Now the EU has now offered us extra funds to help rebuild the country. Some people welcome that money because we really need help to recover the resources lost by the lack of tourism. There needs to be investment in more disadvantaged areas here, too. Some people think these offers don’t go far enough, and argue that our international debts should be cancelled, or at least postponed for five or 10 years until we have recovered a little. Others, again, emphasise the importance of tracing the finds stolen by Ben Ali and his cohorts.

Nonetheless, the EU offer is helpful, especially because tensions are already emerging with Europe, especially France, because of the number of Tunisian emigrants. Our army’s attention is focused on the border with Libya, and we aren’t able to easily prevent people from leaving. There are some 22,000 Tunisians living in France already and there are worries elsewhere in Europe about more Tunisian refugees continuing to escape the problems here. The Italians too are getting concerned over illegal immigrants – tens of thousands have landed on the island of Lampedusa – and even offered to help us patrol our borders, which we were not happy about. But it is in Europe’s interest to treat us as a favoured nation and ensure that there is stability here.