Tunisia's hopes and fears a year after fall of Ben Ali

By Mounir Souissi and Clare Byrne Jan 12, 2012, 14:59 GMT

Tunis/Paris - This Saturday Tunisians will mark the first anniversary of the fall of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and take stock following a year of mixed blessings for the country that led the Arab world down the road of revolution.

On January 14, 2011, Ben Ali and his wife went into exile in Saudi Arabia after a month of protests over his corrupt, repressive 23-year rule that unleashed a wave of uprisings across the region.

For Moncef Marzouki, the veteran human rights activist who became president after democratic elections in October, January 14 will be a time to celebrate 'that we (Tunisians) no longer live in fear, that we are no longer in awe of the police and that the corrupt and the torturers are now the ones in hiding.'

'It's a wonderful feeling to feel that we now live in a dignified, free country where people are no longer subjects but citizens,' Marzouki, told France's Mediapart online news magazine in an interview at the presidential palace in late December.

'Karama'. Dignity. It's a word people use a lot in Tunisia, when explaining what drove them to take to the streets a year ago, at enormous personal risk. Over 200 people were killed during the month-long uprising, which saw police open fire with live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators.

'The revolution was about dignity first and foremost,' Issam Affi, a 30-year-old olive farmer in Sidi Bouzid, the central town where the revolution began, told dpa.

But a year later, that dignity, which is closely bound up for Tunisian men with having a job and the means to support a family, is still a far off prospect for many.

Unemployment, one of the key drivers of the revolution, rose from around 13 per cent in 2010 to over 18 per cent in 2011, as economic growth, which had averaged 5 per cent a year over the past two decades, skidded to a halt, coming in at zero.

Tourism, the country's chief foreign currency earner, has been one of the main casualties of the revolution, with foreign arrivals down by over 50 per cent last year.

One of the main challenges for the new government will be to convince Western tourists the country is safe again to visit and that the arrival to power through the polls of the Islamist party Ennahda does not put a dampener on their holiday in the sun.

The government also urgently needs to attract investment to the depressed interior of the country, where the uprising began in December 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, with the self-immolation of a hard-up fruit vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi.

His act, which galvanized people to revolt, has spawned a series of imitation attacks since the start of 2012, revealing continuing high levels of despair.

Six people set themselves on fire in the first week of the year.

Ammar Gharsallah, a father in his forties, died on Monday of his burns, days after setting himself alight outside the main administration building in the southern city of Gafsa where he had been protesting being laid off from his job as a plumber.

Following his inauguration as president in December, Marzouki appealed for a six-month social and political 'truce'.

His call fell on deaf ears as Tunisians revel in their new-found right to claim and declaim.

This week, hundreds of journalists took to the streets of Tunis to protest the appointment by the government of new bosses at the state broadcaster and state press agency, saying the staff should have been consulted.

Women's rights groups and groups representing the families of the victims of the revolution demanding justice for their loved ones have also staged several protests in recent weeks.

Women's groups and secular opposition parties fear that Ennahda, which officially espouses a moderate, democratic form of Islam, may nonetheless move to try impose a religious agenda on Tunisia, seen as the most liberal of Arab countries.

They also fear the increasing assertiveness of radical Islamist groups.

'They (Salafi Muslims) have already started forcing women to wear the veil and stay at home to bring up children,' Boutheina, a 44-year-old doctor living in Tunis told dpa, expressing concern.

Marzouki, in the interview with Mediapart, rubbished such fears.

Pointing out that nearly 60 per cent of Tunisians voted against Ennahda in last year's assembly elections, he scolded: 'To present Tunisia as having fallen into the hands of Islamists is to either show ignorance or bad faith.'