Financial Times: Tunisia, hope for democracy in the Arab world, has joined the train of dictatorship

London – “Al Quds Al Arabi”: David Gardner, commentator at the British newspaper Financial Times, said tyranny has filled the ideological void in the Middle East, even Tunisia, which was the incubator of democratic hope in the region , moves today towards the reign of the individual man.

It is unlikely that Kais Saied, professor of constitutional law, will be the man sent by divine providence or the savior of Tunisia, but the Tunisian president put aside the democratic constitution of 2014 adopted after the revolution and decided to govern by presidential decrees.

After his dismissal from the prime minister in July, this man in legal detail turned to one-man rule. Tunisia was the only country that maintained some of the high hopes of the so-called Arab Spring uprisings in the region, which began to shed the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, but those hopes seem to have fallen and have been faded. dotted.

Tunisians, angry at their rival elites who failed to resolve the financial and debt crisis that led to the collapse of the economy and the spread of unemployment and poverty, elected Saeed in 2019 by an overwhelming majority and saw his election as a reproach to that elite. Gardner noted that a number of polls have indicated popular support for the usurpation of power in July. Even the Ennahda Movement, the once powerful Islamist party with the largest bloc in parliament, was divided over succession with the leadership, with party members expressing their anger at it and his transgressions. Saeed, a social conservative who knows what his people want, has won support from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as Egypt.

And she saw in the absolute Gulf monarchies, alongside Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former general who led a popular coup against the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, a new addition against the anti-Islamist front. . In contrast, the United States and Europeans called on Saeed to return to democratic standards, in a light rebuke that did not go beyond a beating on the hand. This new reserve is due to the new Western attraction for Arab despots, i.e. preferring trusted dictators to elusive Democrats, especially when those dictators act as a barrier against political Islam.

Perhaps after the troops withdrew from Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden decided to withdraw from places in Iraq, Syria, and possibly the Gulf region. French President Emmanuel Macron supports not only Said and Sisi, but also Libya’s warlord Khalifa Haftar. The West is leaving an ideological vacuum at a time when it is viewed by Democrats and dictators as an unreliable ally. Neither China nor Russia have concealed their support for the tyrants, but America and the Europeans are now seen as hypocrites who hide behind their equipment, and hope to handle recurring crises in the Middle East. The collusion supporting the dictatorship contributes to the spread of jihadism and the expansion of migratory movements that fuel radical populist sentiments in the West.

Many in the Arab world want security, a fulfilling life and a decent life. Denying them their rights is not the right way to do this. What is particularly painful is that Tunisia, unlike Syria, has nurtured dynamic institutions such as unions, improved the effectiveness of education, and should not succumb to government failures. At a time when the erasure of liberal democracy under the test of the rule of law has led to the destruction of Brasilia in Budapest, not to mention Washington, the leaders of the Middle East are trying to find an alternative to justify their tyranny.

Their populism usually takes the form of a revival of nationalism and a restoration of past civilization and cultural glories. No more clear than that is the construction by the Iranian theocracy of military militias in the Levant, Iraq, Yemen and the Gulf, which is seen as a Shiite Islamic incursion of the new Persian imperialism. As well as Saudi Arabia, which is seen as Iran’s fiercest competitor and emphasizes its role as the cradle of Islam and protector of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina, or what is close to the historic Islamic caliphate. And Turkey, which abolished the caliphate a century ago, under the Islamic populism of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, restored the demands of the neo-Ottoman union and its previous control over Syria and Iraq, and developed the doctrine of the “blue homeland”, which speaks of a significant part of the maritime waters from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean.

For its part, Egypt has returned to the Pharaohs to confirm what Muhammad Suleiman of the Middle East Institute in Washington says about the “civilized state”, comparing it to China, Russia, India and Turkey. All of these rulers are trying to assert a historical sense of fate and law that has been ruined by outsiders. In the foul present where despots try to mask their tyranny with new legitimacy, it now seems to have spread to Tunisia, the ancient cradle of democratic hope.

The series of Arab unrest that began in that country in 2011 may not have succeeded in ending the tyranny, but it has exposed the emptiness of some Arab dictatorships and the fragility of others. Moreover, it stands to reason that Arab dictatorships have never been a barrier against Islamism, but an assembly line for jihadists, and that is unlikely to change.