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Pink with an article On the foreign policy websiteForeign policeThe American, that the Tunisian army is the only army in the Arab world not to have interfered in political affairs during the country’s 65 years of independence, but President Kais Saied has broken this tradition, but this path can still be reversed.
The author of the article, Radwan Al-Masmoudi, director of the Washington-based Center for Studies on Islam and Democracy, said the Tunisian armed forces are the only army in the Arab world never to participate local political or economic affairs.
He explained that when Tunisia gained independence from France in 1956, former Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba played a key role in ensuring that the military stayed out of political and economic affairs, and the The country’s first constitution went so far as to prevent soldiers from voting, a clause that still applies in legislative and presidential elections.
wise thing
The writer said withdrawing the military from politics has made sense. When a wave of military coups and dictatorships swept through the Arab world, Tunisia remained immune to infection and remained a republic ruled by civilians.
He stressed that even the regime of former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali maintained this separation between civil and military affairs after the bloodless coup of 1987.
During the 2011 revolution, Al-Masmoudi says the military were greeted as the heroes of the people, as they refused to support Ben Ali in his dying days, refusing direct orders to bomb the town of Kasserine and shoot. the protesters, and they also protected the protesters from police violence and public and private property, but they refused.
In 2017, the (secular, centrist) party Nidaa Tounes submitted to Parliament a proposal to grant soldiers and military officers the right to vote only in local elections, arguing that the military are also Tunisian citizens.
safer
The majority of Tunisians and their representatives felt that it was safer to continue to keep the army out of politics, especially in this period of transition after the Arab Spring, when democratic institutions were not not yet fully established.
The 2014 constitution clearly defined the role of the military in providing impartial support to civilian authorities, but this was violated on July 25, when soldiers accompanied by military tanks executed Saeed’s order to shut down the office. Prime Minister Hisham al-Mashishi and the entire parliament, and prevent its elected members from entering and managing the affairs of the people. .
Al-Masmoudi described this as the first time in modern Tunisian history that the military was involved in political affairs.
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