Tunisia comes undone as Opposition leader murdered......

http://www.juancole.com/2013/02/tunisias-spring-turmoil.html

Why Tunisia’s Arab Spring is in Turmoil

Posted on 02/09/2013 by Juan

On Friday, tens of thousands of Tunisians took to the streets to protest the shocking assassination of leftist, secular politician Chokri Belaid earlier this week. He had been the leader of a small opposition party and had been an outspoken critic both of the ruling al-Nahda Party and of the neighborhood militias that sprung up during the revolution of 2011 and many of which have never been demobilized.

Friday was marked by a general strike called for by the powerful General Union of Tunisian Workers (French acronym UGTT), the first in 35 years. (During the January, 2011, revolution, the UGTT was relatively timid and only called for a 2-hour work stoppage at one point).

One reason the UGTT called the general strike is that the religious right ruling party, al-Nahda, has since the revolution made a strong partnership with the private Tunisian business sector, and has been unsympathetic toward, and sometimes has repressed, workers’ strikes and movements.

In response to this week’s crisis, al-Nahda Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali proposed the formation of a government of national unity, in which he would appoint apolitical technocrats to major cabinet posts instead of prominent fundamentalist al-Nahda politicians. But the next day, his party’s central committee objected to this plan.

Belaid’s assassination was the most visible and prominent evidence of Tunisia’s class polarization. It is three-way, with workers and intellectuals of the left opposing the new government’s Neoliberal tendencies; with middle and upper classes tied to the old secular state and its institutions afraid of fundamentalism and privatization; and with the fundamentalists promoting private businessmen.

But the murder of Belaid also points to widespread security problems in the wake of the fall of the dictatorial regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali two years ago. The security problems derive from three quarters: simple criminal gangs, unruly neighborhood militias, and militant Salafi fundamentalists who act as Ku Klux Klan-style vigilantes against secularists. All three problems derive from the inability of the current government to reconstitute the security forces after the revolution. Tunisia’s some 80,000 secret police were largely disbanded, and the ordinary police are poorly paid and lacking in morale, feeling that people unfairly blame them for policing during the dictatorship. The military is small (35,000 men in a country of 10.5 million) and apolitical and has not played a significant role in civil security issues.

In turn, the incompetence of the ruling al-Nahda government in restoring security is in part structural. The government is full of people who were harassed by the police and unjustly jailed during the old regime, and restoring power to the police is probably not high on their agenda.

The other problem is the way the outcome of the October 23, 2011 parliamentary elections was handled. The Muslim, religious al-Nahda party only got about 37% of the seats. Secular, leftist and center-left parties made up the rest. Moncef Marzouki, leader of the Congress for the Republic party (center-left), went into coalition with al-Nahda and with the small Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties of Mustapha Ben Jaafar. Marzouki became president and Ben Jaafar became Speaker of the parliament. But the prime ministership went to Hamadi Jebali, and old-time fundamentalist, who formed a cabinet that largely was drawn from al-Nahda, the religious right. The three of them are called the ‘troika’ in Tunisia.

Marzouki is erratic and quirky, and ineffectual. Parliament doesn’t function all that well, and Ben Jaafar’s party only got 20 seats, so he isn’t powerful. Jebali and his fundamentalist cabinet have thrown their weight around even though they essentially head a minority government. Tunisian middle classes are often not just secular but militantly Voltaire-like, and they hate al-Nahda and its government.

The security problem posed by the hard line fundamentalist Salafis, who go around physically assaulting people and disrupting cultural events they don’t approve of, has generally been soft-pedaled by al-Nahda. Its leaders typically won’t condemn them outright, and talk about secular ‘provocations’ to the violence, thus blaming the victim.

The secularists go further. When I was in Tunisia last May, secularists repeatedly alleged to me that al-Nahda secretly runs the Salafis as enforcers for their own party, putting them up to their extreme actions. (In September, Salafis were bused by someone to an outer suburb of Tunis where the US embassy is located, and they attacked it).

In some ways, al-Nahda has itself to blame for the polarization and suspicion. It should have put more leftists in the cabinet (reflecting their weight in parliament), and it should have dealt more firmly with the Salafis and neighborhood militias.

Al-Nahda politicians have also sometimes deployed fiery rhetoric against secularists like Belaid.

Belaid was a critic of the neighborhood militias, of the Salafis and of al-Nahda. But his widow fingered al-Nahda as behind his murder, and this charge is widely believed in the tony neighborhoods of LaMarsa and other nothern suburbs.

If you really did believe that al-Nahda has dictatorial tendencies and has secret assassination cells, it would be alarming to have it be your government, hence the big demonstrations on Friday. But that conspiracy theory is only the expression of bigger class conflicts and anxieties. Tunisia is roiled not just by a religion/secular divide but by a Religious Right vs. Workers and peasants divide, with many middle class intellectuals siding with the latter. That is why the protests took place in hardscrabble rural towns as well as in downtown Tunis. Rural Tunisia is relatively religious, but it is also disproportionately unemployed, and al-Nahda has yet to do much for them. Indeed, where they have tried to strike and protest on labor issues, it has put them down (in a way it seems uninterested in putting down violent Salafis).

As usual, a lot of pundits are looking to use the instability in Tunisia to indict the Arab Spring. But the divisions and the structural problems in the country were largely produced by the old dictatorship, which could no longer deal with them by state coercion. Tunisia is wracked by that new phenomenon, of open political struggle. The country needs to rework it into peaceful civil politics if it is to go ahead, but the struggle itself is salutary. The old Tunisia of 80,000 secret police spying on citizens’ every word and the criminalization of political speech is gone, and good riddance. People who want that back for the sake of ‘stability’ are being unrealistic; it is what produced the instability, because it was untenable in the long run.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/02/20132712952351890.html

Tunisia: Murder most foul

Assassination of opposition leader Shokri Belaid highlights a string of beatings and killings since country's uprising. Yasmine Ryan Last Modified: 07 Feb 2013 14:46 inShare1 Email Print Share Feedback

Tunisians of all political stripes are in shock after the killing of Shokri Belaid, leader of the Democratic Patriots party. Of all the political turmoil the country has experienced since the 2010-11 uprising, the slaying of the leftist politician - a well-known opposition figure and vocal critic of the ruling coalition - marks a new low. The resulting crisis has led to the collapse of the government, and could potentially doom the election that was set to take place later this year. Many say the killing is unsurprising, and that the Islamist-led government bears a heavy responsibility for tolerating and fuelling a deep partisan divide and a culture of political violence. A star of the Popular Front, a leftist political alliance of which his party is a member, Belaid had many supporters among those who accused the current government of failing to deliver on social justice and economic development. He was a figurehead of the protests in Siliana last November, when tensions over unemployment and stalling economic progress erupted. Ali Laarayedh, Tunisia's interior minister, accused Belaid of inciting the protesters against the police. Belaid in turn said the interior ministry was guilty of tyranny. Belaid, a lawyer and activist, had also been at the forefront of the early lawyer's protests in December 2010, which grew to become the uprising that toppled the Tunisian government in January 2011. The Ennahdha movement and most of the country's opposition parties did not give the uprising their explicit backing until the last days.  Violent attacks Wednesday’s shooting is the second suspected killing of an opposition politician since the uprising, and one of many violent attacks.  Anger in Tunisia over slain opposition figure In October, Lotfi Naqdh - a regional leader of the secularist conservative Nida Tounes Party - was beaten to death in the southern town of Tatouine. His death followed an outbreak of violence between his party and government supporters, the first big flare-up of interparty violence. The government claimed he died of a heart attack, but an autopsy last week confirmed that Naqdh had died as a result of lynching at the hands of government supporters. Said Chebli, the head of the Tatouine branch of Leagues for the Protection of the Revolution is one of the people implicated in Naqdh’s killing. Ali Fares, a MP of the ruling Ennahdha party, called on Thursday for Chebli and other suspects in the mob lynching to be released. “These people came out into the streets for the noble cause of defending the revolution, and instead of paying them homage, they have been incarcerated,” Fares declared. Many opposition parties, human rights groups and activists have called for the dissolution of the leagues, which some compare to militia groups. Belaid was among these critics, arguing that the groups were reinforcing a deep partisan divide and trying to assert ownership over what the revolution meant. For its part, Ennahdha argues they are a counterforce against its secular opponents, particularly the UGTT, the mighty national union. Members of the league were accused of attacking the UGTT headquarters last December.  The media, viewed by many government supporters as being anti-Islamist, have also been targeted. At a protest against the country’s media in Sousse in December, for instance, demonstrators reportedly chanted the slogan“News, we want your skin!” Exactly who is responsible for the assassination is unclear, and members of Ennahdha have also been targeted by political violence. Abdelfattah Mourou, the party’s co-founder and an advocate of a progressive form of political Islam, was reportedly assaulted by a group of Salafists a week ago. Independent investigation The UK-based rights group Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation into Belaid's death, and for the authorities to take a more proactive stance against political violence. “Today's shocking killing must serve as a wake-up call to the authorities. It is their duty to protect all individuals, including those who criticise the government or Tunisia’s leading Ennahdha party, from violence. No group, regardless of its affiliation, can be above the law,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director at Amnesty International, said in a press statement. Said Aidi, a member of the executive committee of the Republican Party and a former minister, said that opposition parties had been calling on the interior ministry for months to put an end to inflammatory partisan language against opposition figures. Aidi, a conservative secularist, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview that the government was “totally responsible” for Belaid’s death because of what he described as its indifference to the intimidation of opposition activists and politicians. “There have been incitations to murder made in the mosques against figures including Shokri Belaid,” he said. Aidisays he was himself beaten by groups he believes were linked to Ennahdha, during a peaceful march commemorating the Tunisian union leader and political philosopher Farhat Hached last December 5. He suffered a skull fracture and serious eye injury, and says his aggressors escaped with impunity.  "These are fascist thugs," he told Al Jazeera, adding that in the past few days, many opposition movements have had their meetings disrupted by the groups. But Ennahdha denies any links to Wednesday’s killing, which it has firmly denounced. “This is a sad day for Tunisia … we’ve never had anything like this in our history,” said Zied Ladhari, an Ennahdha MP. “Even if there are political divergences between us, we can’t accept such acts of violence against those who don’t share our ideas.” He told Al Jazeera in a phone interview that a serious investigation would be needed to uncover who was behind the killing, and that those behind it were trying to derail Tunisia’s democratic transition.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/02/20132793714745946.html

Strike called over Tunisia killing

Unions call for general strike over opposition leader's murder as ruling party rejects PM's move to dissolve government. Last Modified: 08 Feb 2013 00:23 inShare2 Email Print Share Feedback

Tunisia's labour unions have called for a general strike on Friday to protest against the killing of opposition politician Shokri Belaid. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Tunis, said the decision to strike was a "significant move forward". "The last general strike took place in 1978 and basically, this is something that crippled Tunisia and over the past three decades, the government have always tried to maintain good ties with the unions," said Ahelbarra. The tension could escalate on Friday as high turnout is expected for Belaid's funeral. "We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with others parties about forming a coalition government" - Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda's vice-president The police and army have been put on alert to prevent any outbreaks of violence and to "deal with any troublemakers" announced the presidential spokesman Adnan Mancer in a press conference late on Thursday. The strike also comes on the back of the country's ruling Islamist Ennahda party rejecting Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali's proposal to dissolve the government and install a cabinet of technocrats in a bid to restore calm after Shokri's assassination. "The prime minister did not ask the opinion of his party," said Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda's vice-president. "We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with others parties about forming a coalition government." Ennahda won 42 percent of seats in the first post-Arab uprising elections in October 2011 and formed a government in coalition with two secular parties, Marzouki's Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol. Clashes continue Tunisian police meanwhile fired teargas on Thursday to disperse hundreds of people near the Interior Ministry in Tunis as violent protests over Shokri's killing continued for a second day. Demonstrators were throwing stones and chanting slogans calling on Jebali to resign. Jebali had announced he was dissolving the government in the immediate aftermath of Shokri's death. Al Jazeera's Ahmed Janabi, reporting from Tunis, said that security reinforcements have arrived at the French embassy in the heart of Tunis, where protesters have gathered. "Police continue to chase demonstrators away from the embassy's vicinity. Anti-riots forces chased demonstrators in the allays surrounding the embassy," said Janabi. Hundreds of opposition protesters also clashed with police outside the governor's office in the central Tunisian town of Gafsa, an AFP news agency journalist reported. The state news agency TAP also reported clashes in cities across the country, with police resorting to tear gas and warning shots. In the northwest town of Boussalem, demonstrators set fire to a police station. No one has claimed responsibility for the killing of Belaid, a lawyer and secular political figure, who was shot by a gunman as he left home for work on Wednesday. Belaid had been critical of Tunisia's leadership, especially the Ennahda party that dominates the government. He had accused authorities of not doing enough to stop violence by ultraconservatives who have targeted mausoleums, art exhibits and other things seen as out of keeping with their strict interpretation of Islam. As the protests intensified, four Tunisian opposition groups, including the Popular Front, of which the Belaid's Democratic Patriots is a component, announced they were pulling out of the national assembly. Moncef Marzouki, the Tunisian president, cut short a visit to France and said he would fight those who opposed the political transition in his country. The assassination comes as Tunisia is struggling to maintain stability and revive its economy after its longtime dictator was overthrown in an uprising two years ago.