To protect the Tunisian democracy

Tunisia is currently facing serious challenges and its experience is causing it many risks and dangers, the majority of which are social and economic. It is true that the partisan map of the country has not yet been firmly established, but the fact that it is not stable yet is not the main danger posed to the new born Tunisian democracy, the perseverance of which I mentioned in detail in past articles. The majority of the people are focused on issues regarding their livelihood, in light of a constitution that guarantees their freedoms and they do not give much thought to the changing alliances nor to the shapes of the disputes over the leadership of one party or another.

The current task at hand lies in preserving the only democracy in the Arab region. I do not believe that there is a dispute over this task amongst the current political forces. At the moment, the existing alliance has formed a rod propping up the political tent, preventing it from sliding into political chaos, which may pose a danger to the political experience and create an opportunity to restore authoritarianism. Hence the importance of this alliance, which prevents polarisation, especially since political work always involves forces that see the entire state from the perspective of partisan competition and cannot see the issue of the danger posed to the new born government.

I ended my book on the great Tunisian revolution with the prediction that the main dispute that will continue to be on going and that would decide the political fate of Tunisia is the economic and social dispute. This is especially true in its presence within the centres and parties. This applies to the entire country (the coast and the inside), just as it applies to each and every major city. This diagnosis was set in 2011, when the Arab streets were at the climax of their optimism, and at the moment, this issue has become a crucial one.

The driving force behind the Kasserine uprising was social and economic, and the Tunisian democracy was able to absorb the incident without having a large number of victims. Tunisia provided a different model for dealing with such incidents; but what are the guarantees for the next protest? How big will it be?

In order to make is possible to deal with this structural problem, we must employ real development policies, but there must also be growth. This is a necessary condition, but on its own, it is not enough.

Tunisia is facing a severe economic constraint that is hindering its development. Some of these elements are geo-strategic and others are political. In addition to this, the instability in Libya has impacted Tunisians’ sources of income, and the economy is suffering further burdens from hosting the refugees from its neighbours. In addition to this, terrorist crimes have targeted this new democracy and directly impacted tourism, which is considered the second source of foreign currency in Tunisia. The income from tourism equals 20 per cent of these sources, and about seven per cent of the economy. Investments were also impacted by the instability brought on by terrorism, as well as the reactions to them, thus compounding its impact on the context of political partisan competition. We still do not know what the consequences of any future military intervention in Libya may have on exporting terrorism to Tunisia.

The wealthy countries in our world still have not learned their lessons from previous experiences, and our politicians do not think about the need to support the Tunisian experience with grants and investments (if they cannot write off debts), even though this is more worthwhile than spending money on weapons and armies in the future to combat the terrorism that will result from the collapse of this unique democratic experience, or from the increased number of frustrated youth who are in despair regarding the potential to improve their living conditions.

The Tunisian budget represents about a third of the total GDP (i.e. a third of the economy). From this, 45 per cent is spent on wages and 37 per cent goes to paying off debts. The fact that a third of the budget goes to debt takes away from spending on infrastructure and other development projects, as well as the provision of job opportunities and services that may alleviate the existing social issues. As of March 2014, Tunisia’s foreign debt increased to about $12.5 billion, exhausting about 40 per cent of the GDP. The 2015 budget revealed the increase of foreign debt by 2.2 per cent. An indicator of the economy’s weakness is the decrease of internal savings from 22 per cent to 12 per cent, and the increase of unemployment, which amounted to an average of 15.2 per cent of the workforce, according to official figures. However, this figure is distributed differently, as the unemployment rate has reached 25 per cent in the west of the country. The most dangerous unemployment rate is that amongst graduates, which reached 31-57 per cent in the area of Sidi Bouzid, for example. This type of unemployment causes the most social frustration, desperation and anger, taking into consideration the expectations created by university education.

The increased unemployment rate is linked to the decline in development and growth rates, as the current development rate ranges between 2-2.5 per cent, while employment requires a rate of at least six per cent to absorb unemployment and contain the number of new youth arrivals into the job market. This, of course, is in the case of the continued phase of what researchers into the relationship between the population and development call the “openness of the demographic window”. This means that the increased frequencies of demographic exposure to the work force, while tension occurs when there is a weak absorption of economic demands for this (this demographic boom and the increased number of youth are factors of the Arab revolutions in recent years).

On the other hand, the weakness of investments and the decline in transfers from abroad in general reduce the possibilities of finding job opportunities.

In order to face these challenges, there is a need for fair growth policies and what we now call social democracy, which relies on political democracy in developing countries. The main condition of this is to achieve an increase in the development rate, because there can be no growth without development.

At this stage, the only Arab country that united and rallied around a true democratic constitution and governs in accordance with it needs support and backing in order to start achieving growth and implementing development policies. The decision to support the Tunisian economy must not be a purely economic one taken only for the profit that can be gained by support. It is a political decision with geo-strategic aspects that even those who do not believe in democracy can see if they are rational. It is not necessary to wait for collapses and the outbreak of revolutions, or to wait for international political mediators to take action after wars in order for donor conferences to be held and support groups to be established.

Translated from Arab48, 13 February 2016.

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