Tunisia: Is Europe funding an autocrat's repression?

Your weekend deep dive

Hello everyone,

I spent a few months in Tunisia after its popular revolt in 2011.

The country became the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings that ricocheted across the Arab world when vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after police confiscated his cart, prompting fierce protests against repression and corruption and demands that President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali step aside.

I arrived in the capital Tunis a few months after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia bringing to an end his 23 years in power and I remember that, even with uncertainty about what might come next, there was a huge sense of optimism around the city with chatter about the future on every corner.

What followed was a decade of democracy - rocky at times, to be sure, but democracy nonetheless. Things unravelled in 2021, though, and this week the world’s biggest rights groups warned of an escalating clampdown on dissent.

Why then, is Europe pouring money into the country?

Let’s take a closer look with a Q&A.

Until next Saturday,

Barry

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Can you tell me a little bit about what happened in the years after 2011?

As I said, the whole thing started when Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated. That was in December 2010 and it only took until January for Ben Ali to bolt.

In October, the moderate and democratic Islamist party, Ennahda, which had been outlawed under Ben Ali, won the most seats in parliamentary elections and formed a coalition government with several secular parties. Disagreements later developed between Ennahda and the secularists with the Islamist party promising to keep Islamic law out of a new constitution that was to be drawn up.

Secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid was shot dead in 2013, prompting protests and a crisis that ultimately led to the resignation of the government and the formation of a technocratic administration. A new constitution was then drawn up, sharing power between a president and a prime minister.

In December 2014, 88-year-old veteran politician Beji Caid Essebsi became the first democratically elected president of modern-day Tunisia and, despite many twists and turns, stayed in power until his death in 2019.

But even before Essebsi’s death, disaffection had been growing over a struggling economy, soaring costs, falling living standards and tax hikes.

You said things took a bad turn in 2021?

Yes. But it wasn’t apparent immediately. A political outsider, Kais Saied, appeared on the national stage in 2019 ahead of an election to replace Essebsi. The slightly robotic 61-year-old, perhaps improbably, excited the country’s youth.

The media coverage was effusive. A former law professor, they said he ran his campaign like he did his classroom, with an open-door policy. He understood what worried young people. He hated corruption. And he loved cats.