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Does Tunisia Have A Shot At Democracy?

Reut Cohen |
January 16, 2011 | 12:56 p.m. PST

Opinion Editor

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali controlled Tunisia for 23 years. (Creative Commons)
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali controlled Tunisia for 23 years. (Creative Commons)

For the first time since 1985, an Arab leader has been ousted due to public unrest. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was president of Tunisia for 23 years, fled from the country on Friday.

Tunisia's unemployment level, estimated at 13.1 percent for 2011 despite economic growth, along with soaring food prices, escalated condemnation of government corruption.

Within a span of 24 hours, Tunisia had three presidents. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi initially appointed himself as interim president, but on Saturday, Foued Mebazaa, former speaker of parliament, was officially sworn in as the president of the moment. It remains to be seen whether the North African nation will favor democracy in 60 days when elections are expected to be held. As riots and looting continue despite Ben Ali's departure, it's also unclear if Tunisia will be able to ward off anarchy.

But Michael J. Totten, writing for The New York Post, believes Tunisia has a real chance at democracy:

The regime may well survive with a different man at the helm. That’s how things stand today. Foued Mebazaa, Ben Ali’s former speaker of parliament, is in charge at the moment. A different secular police state altogether might come to power. A reactionary Islamist dictatorship is always a possibility after a Muslim country’s government falls. And maybe — maybe — a democratic system of sorts might emerge.

Unlike in war-torn Afghanistan or fanatical Saudi Arabia, Tunisian democracy is a real possibility. It’s a bit unlikely as it’s only one possible option of many, but it could happen. Mebazaa himself is now promising, perhaps even sincerely, “a better political life which will include democracy, plurality and active participation for all the children of Tunis.”

I’ve spent time in more than a dozen Muslim countries, eight of them Arab, and Tunisia is — or at least was before this month when things fell apart — one of the most advanced and stable. The majority of its citizens belong to a well-educated middle class, the infrastructure seems no worse than Europe’s, and a high percentage of women in the cities have discarded the veil and the headscarf and dress like Europeans. The latter may sound like a small thing, but in a Muslim country, it visually indicates how much women’s rights have advanced. The overwhelming majority live near the coast in cosmopolitan cities that have traded and been in cultural contact with Europeans for millennia. It’s not a Western country, but it fully belongs to the Mediterranean region and is oriented more toward the West than most Arab countries....

Read it all here.



 

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