Six years and one national rebellion after the fraudulent 2005 election, Tunisia has just completed the first truly democratic election in its history. It was also the first election of the Arab Spring. The election was held to create a legislative body that will govern the country while it writes a new constitution.
The results were astonishing.
The signs of increased activity by the Tunisian old guard are multiplying, confirming that while President Ben Ali has been deposed, the system he helped put in place still fights to maintain its power and privileges.
For the most part untroubled by anti-semitism, Tunisian Jews have little interest in emigrating to Israel.
Complacency about democracy doesn’t become Americans.
After Fernando Marcos was deposed as president, the face of Philippines’ leadership changed, but the country remains mired in debt and poverty. Will Tunisia and Egypt suffer the same fate?
The demonstrators in Algeria have been modest in number, but they are the first signs of deep unrest in a major oil- and natural gas-producing country in the region.
As I try to grasp the full meaning of the Tunisian Revolution and to gauge its future, I am looking at my desk where I have spread two issues of The New York Times, both featuring Tunisia on their front pages. The two issues are dated 23 years apart.
It will be a while before the Obama Administration can assess the damage to its interests done by Egyptian and Tunisian protests.
Like their revolutionary and brave Algerian sisters, who in the 1950s helped bring one of the most developed and vicious colonial armies to its knees and ushered the end of a longstanding European empire, les Tunisiennes challenged the premise that resistance, revolution, and war are the work of men alone. Defiantly, the women continued the resistance until Ben Ali “got the hell out.” Now that he’s gone, Tunisian women are appearing on Arab television and participating in the formation of neighborhood watch groups.
Despite concessions made by interim government in Tunisia, a crisis of trust continues to reign over the people. The government’s fate remains uncertain as hundreds of people arrived in Tunis from rural areas on January 24, calling for the removal of all former government officials. This sea change in power raises several questions about the root causes of this extraordinary protest, the impact it will have on the region as a whole, and whether the theory that Arab civil societies are too inept to generate real change within their own governments has been finally disproved.