The Tunisian army today fired warning shots over protesters marching on the headquarters of the longtime ruling party founded by ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Several ministers in the new unity government resigned their membership of the former ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), which also dissolved its central committee, but it is unclear whether the move will placate opposition groups demanding that the party be purged from government.
The prime minister and president left the party earlier this week.
Many democratic and civil society protagonists of the Jasmine Revolution are concerned that remnants of the old order may cling to power and veto a genuinely democratic transition.
In the latest move to demonstrate the “complete break with the past” the government has promised, it seized the assets of the former ruling family and freed the last remaining political prisoners, including members of a banned Islamist group.
Reports suggest that today’s protesters “welcomed or even cheered its revival, but all insisted that any Islamist political movement must be distinctively Tunisian, predicated on democracy, pluralism and women’s rights.”
The prospects for a stable democratic transition in Tunisia and generating wider regional reform “now depends, in part, on how the US and Europe respond,” says Zalmay Khalilzad (left), former US ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Nations.
There is now a “chance both to help Tunisia’s reformers and renew support for democracy in the Arab world,” he writes in today’s Financial Times. “But any new democracy agenda must be informed by the successes and shortcomings of previous efforts,” he cautions.
International actors are gearing up to provide assistance. The UN said it would send a delegation to Tunisia next week to investigate violence and advise the coalition government on justice and political reforms.
The United States will provide support, administration officials confirm.
“The interim government must create a genuine transition to democracy,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.
The US “will help” the government implement the necessary reforms, he said, including ” an end to violence by security forces against nonviolent civilians, truly free and fair elections, respect for basic human rights, including freedom of expression and assembly, and an accountable, transparent, just government.”
The European Union also offered assistance to help ensure a genuine democratic transition, calling on “all democratic forces [to] forward to shape a new Tunisian democracy and correct the mistakes of the past.”
A substantial democracy assistance package might help the EU atone for a few mistakes of its own.
Former president Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali “was not just another Arab autocrat – he was a star in Europe,” writes the FT’s Rhoula Khalaf.
Under the EU’s “Barcelona process,” his regime received €1.7bn in financial assistance and €2.8bn in loans, ostensibly to encourage “reform and modernization.”
But EU officials EU consistently ignored the human rights and democratization clause in its trade agreement, dismissing the objections of democracy and rights monitors.
Aside from technical assistance on such issues as electoral design, Tunisia’s democratic forces, lacking the capacity, coherence and visibility that inevitably follows decades of suppression urgently need political counsel and practical solidarity.
The “strong possibility” that the democratic opposition will fragment adds urgency to such efforts, as a democracy assistance officer reports from Tunis. With several figures already announcing their presidential candidacies and more exiled dissidents yet to return, there is growing concern that “balkanized” democratic forces will lose out to more disciplined forces.
Pro-democracy forces must “work with Tunisian liberals, both inside and outside the country – first to prevent chaos, then to ensure fair competition and that Islamists, and current ruling parties, do not outmanoeuvre the moderates,” writes Khalilzad, a board member the National Endowment for Democracy.
Who could disagree when both history and current events confirm that a disorganized moderate majority will often lose out to a disciplined but militant minority?
