Interim government bolsters Tunisian armed forces in attempt to restore order before country's first free elections in June
- guardian.co.uk,
- Article history
Tunisia's fragile interim government has called in military reservists to contain a fresh wave of violence as it races to organise the country's first free elections.
Three weeks after the people's revolution that ousted the dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben-Ali and inspired the uprising in Egypt, the feeble caretaker government is still struggling to translate the Arab world's first modern popular revolution into a meaningful democratic process and elections in June.
The foreign minister, William Hague, on Tuesday became the highest-ranking western official to visit Tunisia's caretaker prime minister, Mohammed Ghannouchi, and offer aid to build a social and electoral infrastructure in the Maghreb country repressed by Ben Ali's regime for 23 years.
The government has called on retired members of the army, navy and air force to report for duty and warned police they would be fired for skipping work in an attempt to restore order after the regime's former ruling RCD party was accused by the prime minister of deliberately stirring up chaos and violence in provincial towns that has left at least five dead.
Warning against the dangers of the regime's old-guard provoking further unrest, the caretaker government has won the backing of MPs for the interim president to rule by decree.
This will allow him to bypass the sitting parliament, which is 80% dominated by the RCD. The party, the backbone of the old regime, has been suspended and will be dissolved. In a country of 10 million people, the RCD counts 2 million card-carrying members, with much of civil society forced to bow to party officials for the country's scarce jobs.
After a people's revolution with no leader or political figurehead in a country where opposition parties were weakened by the dictatorship, Tunisian intellectuals said elections would be a challenge. The few political opposition parties are hurriedly moving to set up regional bases and begin political meetings.
The once brutally repressed and exiled Islamist party Ennahda (Awakening), which compares itself to Turkey's ruling Islamist democrats, has begun the arduous process of setting up as an official party and rebuilding its grassroots. It is considered an important player but not a dominant force.
The social-democrat, centre-left PDPD party, seen as the strongest opposition movement, supports the interim government as a key step to free and fair elections. The party's secretary general, Maya Jribi, said she had major concerns about the political climate.
"First, the government is being seen as hesitating and vacillating, for example it provoked outrage over its appointment of regional governors linked to the old regime. By dithering and going back on decisions, it sends out a negative message to public opinion that it's not being rigorous enough in rooting out the old regime. The government needs to send a message that it is open to civil society and not just fall back on the closed circle of the old RCD party.
"Second, we're concerned by the vestiges of the old Ben Ali regime, which are resisting and staging their own counter-revolution to stir up violence, particularly in provincial towns.
"And finally, there is a real impatience on the part of the Tunisian people post-revolution. They want everything at once, and that is legitimate and understandable. They haven't had the associations or institutions to organise themselves so they are demonstrating and putting on political pressure in a non-organised way. We're travelling around the regions holding political meetings urging people to form associations and groups and fight the political battle that way."
It is in the offices of a former bank building in the capital, Tunis, that most of the key work on the country's future is being done. Here commissions on violence, politics and corruption are setting up the structures for "a new Tunisia".
Before dawn queues of people are outside carrying paperwork. Many are looking for justice over land stolen from them by the RCD party or houses taken by the ruling family because they had a "good view" or looked nice. Others come to complain of torture injuries by police during the weeks of protests that led to Ben Ali's fall. Crucially, the political commission, led by independent jurists, is consulting to put in place a voting system for the elections.
Taoufik Bouderbala, the independent lawyer leading the violence commission, said he was investigating more than 200 deaths and 500 injuries, as well as rapes and disappearances from the beginning of the protests on 17 December. "People are impatient for justice. History might forget the torturers, but it doesn't forget the victims," he added.
He will publish an independent report and said the interim government was allowing him complete freedom.
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