Background to the Tunisian Revolution
I am not an expert on Tunisia, but I have been there – and on my visit, shortly after the beginning of the current millennium, I took the opportunity to speak with the Tunisians to whom I was introduced and to read a bit about the place. It is a backwater of sorts, sandwiched between Libya and Algeria, but it is a very interesting backwater nonetheless.
To begin with, Tunisia has no oil, and that is a great blessing. It means that the Tunisians have to develop their own skills and abilities, for they have nothing else on which to rely. The country does have excellent farmland – which the Berbers who lived there in ancient times and their Carthaginian neighbors farmed with considerable success. (To get a feel for what this part of North Africa must have been like in antiquity, read Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece Salammbo). One consequence of the resources it possesses and those it lacks is that Tunisia has a relatively diversified economy. When I visited, it reminded me of Greece and Italy some decades ago. It was prosperous but not rich. There were innumerable cars on the road but they were for the most part cheap Fiats and the like. Everyone spoke the local dialect of Arabic, but they also spoke French – and the food in restaurants was a marvelous mixture of Maghrebi cooking and French cuisine, the coastline was spectacular, and the ancient remains, glorious.
The country was decisively shaped by its first leader Habib Bourguiba (pictured above as a young lawyer and below as an older man) – who was a statesman reminiscent of Atatürk. Born in 1903 in Monastir, educated in Tunisia and at the University of Paris, he married a French woman while he was in Paris, and in Tunisia he later took a second wife. In 1934, he founded the Neo-Destour Party, and the French colonial authorities kept him behind bars for much of the following decade. In 1943, the Italians and the Germans freed him from imprisonment in France and tried to make use of him, but he managed to outmaneuver his fascist benefactors, and throughout the war he firmly backed the Allies.
After the war, Bourguiba led the movement for Tunisian independence – which was granted by France, after some difficulties, on 20 March 1956. And on 25 July 1957, he overthrew the Tunisian monarchy and established a republic with himself as President. In the Cold War, he opted for the West, and in 1965, in defiance of Egypt’s Nasser, he publicly called for there to be a peace treaty between the Israelis and the Arabs based on the 1947 UN resolutions. In Tunisia, initially, he promoted socialism. When that failed to produce prosperity, he reversed course and vigorously promoted the free market system. Throughout, Bourguiba was a modernizer, who did what he could to transform Tunisia into a modern society on the French model. Though nominally a Muslim ruling an officially Muslim state, he was in practice a staunch secularist, and he promoted female emancipation by prohibiting polygamy, outlawing marriage for women younger than seventeen, and making it legal for wives to initiate divorce. His government sponsored literacy campaigns; it provided for public education; and it promoted public health and family planning.
In the wake of 9/11, I attended a series of small conferences focused on politics in the Islamic world. There I remember meeting a young State Department official who was involved in America’s outreach to the Muslim world. She told me that, at the gatherings sponsored by the State Department, the representatives from Tunisia stuck out like a sore thumb. They wanted nothing to do with political Islam. Theirs was, they insisted, a secular state – and they looked with suspicion on the American initiative. When I heard this, I could not help but think of the old Kemalists that I encountered when I lived in Istanbul from 1984 to 1986, who would have denounced such an endeavor on the part of the Americans as a Saudi plot.
In only one particular did Habib Bourguiba fail. The constitution adopted in 1959 did not limit the number of terms that a president could serve in office but it did prohibit anyone older than seventy-five from holding the office. When the time approached when the constitution dictated that he retire, however, Bourguiba opted to ignore his own handiwork, and in 1975 he had himself declared president for life. He lived to the ripe old age of 96, dying in 2000. Well before that, however, in 1987, he was gently sidelined by his own prime minister – a former soldier, intelligence director, diplomat, and interior minister named Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – who first arranged for the medical authorities to declare Bourguiba senile and totally incapable of executing the functions of his office and then, contrary to the provisions of the constitution, stepped into the old man’s shoes. Ben Ali ruled in turn until this past week when his inability to quell the riots in Tunis and elsewhere occasioned his flight from the country.
When I was in Tunisia, Bourguiba had recently died, and Ben Ali’s last quasi-legal term in office – under the constitution as amended in 1988 and again in 1992 following Bourguiba’s ouster – was about to run out. Ben Ali had, however, left little doubt that he intended to ignore the constitution in the manner of his predecessor – which, in effect, he did by way of a referendum. I can remember a law dean telling me sadly over a sumptuous lunch that, while the country had been successful in a great many ways, it lacked a certain “political maturity.” He thought Bourguiba responsible for both its successes and its failures, and he looked forward to the day when Ben Ali would no longer be on the scene.
It is hard to know how things will turn out. You can read reports here, here, here, and here. It is clear that, when he departed, Ben Ali thought his sojourn abroad would be temporary. In accord with the constitution as most recently amended, his prime minister attempted to act as president in his absence. But then something happened. Someone noticed that Ben Ali had failed to issue the requisite decree; the constitutional court asserted itself and declared the office of the presidency vacant; and, in accord with that same constitution, the presiding officer of the lower house of the Tunisian parliament assumed office and announced that there would be a presidential election within sixty days.
You should read Tunisia’s constitution. In all of its forms, it is impressive. Had the provisions of the unamended constitution been observed by its author, Tunisia might have emerged as a working Arab democracy long ago. As things stand, the fact that legal forms are now being observed is a good sign. If elections are held within sixty days (as the constitution stipulates), if the ruling party restrains itself and the elections are free and fair, Tunisia may take the place in the world that Bourguiba once imagined for it. Everything depends on what the law dean I met called “political maturity.” What is required is statesmanship on the part of the acting president, who is barred by the constitution from being a candidate for the office he now temporarily occupies; self-denial on the part of the ruling party; and respect for the law on the part of the populace. If everything is done in an orderly and legal way, Tunisia may set a precedent for Egypt and other Arab states of great importance.
UPDATE: It turns out that Michael Totten has been to Tunisia as well. For two travel pieces he wrote on the country, click here. For the photographs he took, click here.
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Dec '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
So the situation in Tunisia is less one of revolution than of Restoration -- that is, an effort to return to the spirit and letter of the existing Constitution? (Sounds pretty familiar to American readers... I wonder, do Tunisians prefer coffee or TEA?)
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
They are Arabs. They love coffee.
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
After reading your post, I know my first month's fare is already well-spent. My world history classes passed over this jewel to keep stoking my nascent hatred of American imperialism ... ah, the memories! I pray for Tunisians and hope for them as well. It sounds like a country I could love -- especially the food.
We Americans are not grateful enough for George Washington. Your post is a terrific reminder of his greatest gift to our country -- his willingess to put power down and walk away, even when it was not required. Hail to the steward who faithfully and nobly surrendered his office, intact and well-tended!
Thanks much. :-)
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 5:19pmDec '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
But a nice glass of green tea with mint is also very welcome anywhere in the Sahel, I understand. Not that the TEA Party metaphor would translate across cultures -- but perhaps a different meaning for the acronym, like "Tunisians End Autocracy," "Tunisian Enfranchisement Activism" or "Tunisian Emancipation Action," might resonate.
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 12:02pmJun '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
There are still so many countries where political maturity is absent. I can never regard as stable any country that has the right constitution, says the right things, allies with the right people... and still relies on one leader to reign in perpetuity so that it doesn't all fall apart. (real or imagined) Clear and smooth succession is one of the biggest proofs of political maturity. I hope rule of law can prevail in Tunisia. When it doesn't, radicals always seem to take over. I'm not particularly optimistic if it bleeds over to Libya since chaos can breed something even worse than Qadaffi, if that's possible to conceive. We don't need North Africa more restive than it already is. (But please don't read this as my desire to keep Qadaffi in power)
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 12:03pmOct '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
Thank you for your erudite synopsis professor. I agree with Dave, that a fatal flaw of many constitutional republics is concentration of power in the executive, especially control of the military. It appears that the military is showing self restraint. Let us hope that it continues to do so.
Jul '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
Fascinating. My first thought too was of President Washington. I wonder what if..... ?
Nov '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
For once, I am optimistic about an event in the Muslim World. Unless the US State Department is completely incompetent, it should be monitoring this thing feverishly and doing everything in its power to encourage a (more or less) orderly transition. My fear is that Obama (whom I sincerely suspect of being a closet Muslim) will not sympathize with a secular revolution.
It would be wonderful if the whole of North Africa became a secular, democratic region. Egypt, though, remains a serious problem (because of the Muslim Brotherhood).
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 3:25pmDec '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
Thank you very much, Dr. Rahe. I needed some sense of the place and you provided that. I'll call it "Ricopaedia".
Dec '10
Re: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
The military is a historically proven model of organization. The facile perception attributes its strength to force, which it has. What it also has, whether overlooked or despised, is order.
In the absence of an organizational principle, such as the rule of law with equal application to both the powerful and the powerless, successfully replicable business models with property rights protected from confiscation by its country’s predatory tribes (family oligarchies in the backward, public sector unions in the advanced), or the discipline of a predominantly Westernized middle-class, the only experience undeveloped countries have is disorder.
In dysfunctional societies, primitive societies, because of their lack of organization, their lack of order, they find no other means of improvement than by a military organization, however rudimentary, at first, it may be.
Name a "great" nation, ancient or modern, Grecian, Roman, European, Leninist, or Maoist, that abruptly modernized without the thrust, in the beginning, from the organizational principle of its military.
America is truly exceptional, isn’t it?
Edited on Jan 16, 2011 at 10:47pmRe: Background to the Tunisian Revolution
Charles Gordon
In dysfunctional societies, primitive societies, because of their lack of organization, their lack of order, they find no other means of improvement than by a military organization, however rudimentary, at first, it may be.
Name a "great" nation, ancient or modern, Grecian, Roman, European, Leninist, or Maoist, that abruptly modernized without the thrust, in the beginning, from the organizational principle of its military.
America is truly exceptional, isn’t it? · Jan 16 at 10:30pm
Edited on Jan 16 at 10:47 pm
It is, indeed.