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| Africa North |
| THE ANGRY ARAB: Counter-Revolution Strikes Tunisia |
| 2021-08-09 |
| Via Colonel Cassad (Boris Rozhin): [ConsortiumNews] The monarchical-sounding declaration by Kaïs Saïed eight days ago was stunning: the president who was freely elected in 2019 (for only the second time in Tunisian history) was basically proclaiming a coup d’etat by dismissing the prime minister and suspending parliament. Saïed was elected nine years after the overthrow of President Zine Ben Ali, who in 1987 as the security chief launched a coup against Habib Bourguiba, the founding president of Tunisia. The 1987 coup was classified in Arab political terminology as a “medical coup”, because Ben Ali stated that Bourguiba was no longer mentally fit to assume the duties of the office. As is well-known, the protests against the corruption and repression of Ben Ali (a darling of Western governments and lending institutions) sparked the Arab uprisings in December 2010. SURPRISE WINNER Kaïs Saïed was an unexpected victor in the 2019 presidential election. He was a professor of constitutional law, did not belong to a political party and was not affiliated with any political ideology. He won support in television debates largely due to his strong command of classical Arabic in a country where French influence remains strong. Furthermore, Saïed’s campaign was noted for his firm and categorical denunciation of any normalization with Israel. His answers regarding Palestinian rights and rejection of Israel were a hit on social media, and helped propel him to the top job. Saïed attracted support among Tunisian youth because he represented a new genre of politicians who have not been tainted by the corrupt system. The political system that emerged after the end of the Ben Ali rule suffered from many weaknesses; the divide between the secularists and the Islamists only widened, and the regional, political wars between the UAE and Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Qatar and Turkey on the other hand, raged inside Tunisia, just as they did in Libya and elsewhere. Read the rest at the link |
| Posted by:badanov |