Opinion: Tunisia, the beacon?

BY CARAVAN STAFF

Tunisia is on the threshold of becoming the first Middle East and North African nation to successfully make something of its overthrow of the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

He’ll be watching from his exile in Saudi Arabia as millions of his countrymen and women head to the polls today to vote for a new parliament.

Next month, they’ll head to the ballot box again to cast their vote for a new president.

Unfortunately, not enough media attention is being focused on the country “that started it all” by lighting the fire of popular anger and uprising of a peoples long repressed by an authoritarian government.

In the past few years, Tunisia has come a long way.

Before the populist revolt in Tunisia, there were no successful examples of Arabs overthrowing government in the modern age.

It was in 2008 when Tunisian writer and activist Nazira Rijba authored a piece on the trials and tribulations of dissidents such as herself who were pushing the boundaries of media control and seeking freeing of the press.

She was regularly harassed and intimidated, charged even over an article that she had written on a popular website at the time called Kalima.

“Do not think of us as victims,” she says. “We are paying the price of freedom, but freedom is the door for change.”

And change is coming. Today, Tunisia is a country of civic-minded citizens working for the greater good of the country.

Despite winning the Constituent Assembly Election exactly three years ago, the ruling Islamist government led by the Nahda party bowed down to pressure from street protests and resigned en masse.

In stepping down for the sake of sustainable democratic transition and handing power over to a neutral interim polity that oversaw the passing of a progressive constitution that guarantees right of worship (a demand made by Nahda), the Islamists proved that they had moved from religious to civic politics.

Compare that with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who fought till the bitter end to hang on to power, distance other voices, persecute dissenters and divide the country.

Expect women to also play a growing role in Tunisian society and politics. They have become integral dimensions of the new Tunisian reality. Women candidates are like to run for the presidency next month.

We can only hope that as in 2011, what happens in Tunisia flows over into other countries of the region. Egypt is yet to determine a date for its parliamentary elections, but it is sure to be heavily contested by many different parties and factions.

Both Egypt and Tunisia can progress and prosper, but the chaos in Libya is a considerable threat to such endeavors. More than 3,000 Tunisians have been radicalized – perhaps, having fought alongside Libyan Islamist revolutionaries of the past few years – and have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

In addition to Libya contributing to insecurity on both sides of its borders, there is a fear that returning ISIL fighters will pose a deadly threat to everything Egypt and Tunisia have managed to build.

Unfortunately, in the Arab World, everything is connected and the terror umbrella reaches far and wide.