TUNIS LETTER:Tunisia's openness to the world has helped to make it an undisputed economic success story, yet its civic and political life is firmly closed, writes RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC
TO GET a sense of the paradox of modern Tunisia, start by strolling among the glass-fronted office complexes on the banks of Lake Tunis, a natural lagoon that separates the capital from the choppy Gulf of Tunis and the Mediterranean beyond.
Everything about the district is outward-looking.
You’ll find the trophy headquarters of huge indigenous companies such as Telnet, a technology exporter, among rows of gleaming towers belonging to dozens of multinationals from France, Italy and Spain. In the middle of it all is the city airport, the aircraft swooping so close they look like they’re about to land on the dual carriageway.
Just north lie the ancient ruins of Carthage and upmarket holiday resort towns filled with boutique hotels and whitewashed modernist-style homes belonging to the country’s burgeoning middle classes. In the other direction is old Tunis, a vibrant, hybrid city at ease with its European and Arab identities.
Tunisia’s openness to the world has helped make it an undisputed economic success story. Despite having few natural resources, its economy withstood the pressure of the global crisis to grow by a respectable 3.1 per cent last year.
Its 10 million people enjoy free education, high literacy and home ownership rates and a relatively good health system. The World Economic Forum considers it Africa’s most competitive country. Thanks to a raft of social reforms introduced by Habib Bourguiba, the secular moderniser who became the country’s “president for life” after independence in 1957, women enjoy extensive rights.
In a region riven by poverty and instability, it is not surprising that Tunisians are fiercely proud of their country’s advances.
Yet, for all its openness to the world, Tunisian civic and political life is firmly closed. Bourguiba’s successor, the durable President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was re-elected last October for a fifth five-year term with 90 per cent of the vote – something of a slump on his previous results in 1989, 1994 and 1999, when he got 99 per cent.
A European Commission report found that participation and debate were restricted during the campaign and that there was a “persistent gap” between the government’s official support for human rights and its application of the law.
Many rights activists and journalists have been beaten up and imprisoned, some websites are blocked and state surveillance is believed to be extensive.
Reporters without Borders last year placed Tunisia in 154th place out of 175 on its press freedom index, just below Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Portraits of Ben Ali adorn nearly every boardroom, hotel lobby and public space in the country. Either he or his wife Leila graces the front page of the newspapers every day (one Tunisia specialist recalls a day when a photo of Ben Ali didn’t appear on the front page; the next day his picture appeared twice). The mere mention of his name at a conference I attended last week was a prompt for the crowd’s applause.
His rule seems secure; he is genuinely popular and credited with overseeing the economic boom. One independent-minded journalist I met in Tunis felt certain Ben Ali would win by a landslide, whatever the electoral conditions.
Of course, the regime also benefits from being a staunch ally of western governments.
Tunisia’s stability and its tough stance on radical Islamists are highly valued in Washington, Paris and other capitals, so its human rights record tends to be low on bilateral agendas.
Under the European Neighbourhood Policy, the programme devoted to the EU’s ties to countries on its doorstep, the small north African state receives millions in financial aid and loans from Brussels every year. Discussions are under way on Tunisia’s request for a higher- status partnership, and European diplomats hope to extract concessions on political reform in return.
The question is how far Tunisia can be encouraged to budge. Some observers believe Ben Ali wants to ease strictures and point to an easing of newspaper censorship and the decision to grant permission to the Red Cross to inspect prisons.
Others speculate that apparent inconsistencies in policy are down to a tussle between different currents of opinion within the regime.
When I asked Mohamed Nouri Jouini, Tunisia’s minister for development and international co-operation, whether he agreed that political reform should be up for discussion in the talks with the EU, his answer came swiftly.
“Of course we agree. We made an offer – a very substantial one – not because the Europeans want it, but because the Tunisian people want it. The government is going with the will of the people of Tunisia,” he said. “This is coming from a deep belief that this is the way things have to be done. And to be frank with you, we’ll do it – what we are offering – with Europe or without Europe.”
The key clause here is “what we are offering”. In other words, Tunisia will move, but on its own terms.