Tunisia, here is the latest bad news
While Rached Ghannouchi, the main opponent of Tunisia's president, Kais Saied, has been arrested, the country is slipping into an ever deeper economic crisis. Facts, numbers and comments
At the end of an interrogation that lasted all night, the arrest of Rached Ghannouchi, historical leader of the Islamic party Ennahdha and main opponent of the president of Tunisia, Kais Saied, was validated at dawn this morning.
Meanwhile, the country, caught in the grip of authoritarianism, has to face inflation that has reached its highest level in the last thirty years and a public debt which, without intervention by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), risks ending bankrupt.
Saied's strategy also fits into this framework who, riding the impoverishment due to the economic crisis, foments hatred against the thousands of migrants who find themselves in Tunisia and are forced to leave for the Mediterranean, in the hope of reach the shores of Europe alive.
THE ARREST OF SAIED'S OPPOSITOR
Last Tuesday the headquarters of the Tunisian opposition party Ennahda was raided and then closed by the police a few hours after the arrest of its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, an open critic of the authoritarian drift of President Saied, in office since October 2019.
Saied, in fact, in 2021 granted himself full constitutional powers and succeeded in dissolving Parliament, effectively carrying out, according to various analysts , a coup d'état. Last year it then adopted – through a referendum, in which there was a very low turnout – a new constitution which further strengthened its authority and definitively erased the memory of the Arab Spring.
Now, Ghannouchi, accused of conspiracy against state security, will have to remain in prison until his trial and risks a sentence that could even lead to the death penalty. For his party it is an "unjust and political decision par excellence".
“Its purpose – Ennahda said – is to cover up the catastrophic failure of the coup authorities to improve the social, economic and living conditions of citizens and the inability to deal with the suffocating financial crisis that is driving the country towards bankruptcy in the midst of an unprecedented wave of price increases even in the month of Ramadan”.
THE NUMBERS OF TUNISIA'S ECONOMIC CRISIS
The disastrous economic conditions in which Tunisia finds itself are the result of a series of factors that Lorena Stella Martini, an analyst at the Ecfr (European Council on Foreign Relations) explained to Start : “First of all, we have inflation that has risen to the maximum level of the last thirty years, i.e. 10%. Unemployment is very high and stands at around 15%, but in my opinion the most important figure concerns the youth unemployment rate, which reached 37% in the second quarter of 2022".
“And then – added Martini – obviously there is the public debt which has now reached 90% of the GDP. Therefore, without international aid, Tunisia will not be able to go ahead, to the point that it doesn't even have the funds to make the administrative machinery of the state functional. Hence the need to negotiate a new loan with the International Monetary Fund”.
SAIED HAS A BIG VOICE WITH THE IMF AND THE COUNTRY RISKS DEFAULT
But the deterioration of democratic principles has led to "a stalemate between Tunis and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which risks plunging the country towards default", writes ISPI .
In fact, the Tunisian president made it clear that he was not willing to accept the reform plan requested by the IMF in exchange for a 1.9 billion euro loan: "We will not accept diktats that would lead to an increase in poverty, they are unacceptable ”. The populist Saied particularly contests the cut in subsidies which, according to him, would cause "a social revolt".
THE INCREDIBLE POPULARITY OF SAIED
It is therefore not surprising that, despite the fact that people are increasingly poor, its popularity continues to be incredibly unaffected. According to a survey by Emrhod Consulting cited by the analyst Lorenzo Fruganti of the ISPI MENA Centre, "if we went to vote tomorrow, the Tunisian president would obtain a majority that would allow him to win the first round of the presidential elections".
“The approval rating for his work, although down sharply compared to 82% in August 2021, is in fact around 52%, after gaining four percentage points between December 2022 and February 2023. Furthermore, – reports the 'ISPI – more than 60% of Tunisians said they were optimistic for the future of the country, against 28% of pessimists”.
Also interesting is a survey commissioned by the BBC on over 23,000 Arab citizens, which shows that the belief that democracy means economic fragility is growing in the region.
XENOPHOBIA AND THE NUMBER OF MIGRANTS WHO WANT TO LEAVE GROW
Lastly, to the dramatic economic situation is added the question of migrants, both of those who live in Tunisia and of those who want to leave, pushed now all the more not only because their conditions have worsened but because xenophobia in the country is growing steadily more , also due to some racist statements, which recall the theory of ethnic substitution, pronounced by Saied himself.
Meanwhile, a "non paper" reported by Ansa states that "the European Commission is working on a substantial macro-financial assistance package for Tunisia, complementary to the agreement with the IMF".
“The document expressly refers to the prevention of irregular migrant departures, also thanks to the launch in 2023 of 'an operational partnership against human trafficking', on which Brussels is working and it is hoped that it will be launched by the end of April. The approach – concludes the press agency – also includes 'cooperation on returns and readmissions' as well as strengthening the offer for legal migration, such as the Talent Partnership initiative”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/tunisia-ecco-le-ultime-pessime-notizie/ on Thu, 20 Apr 2023 13:13:23 +0000.