Tunisia's upheaval

No one is really in charge

The revolution is still in flux

General Ammar to the rescue?

AFTER a week of jubilation, life for many Tunisians is slowly getting back to normal. Most shops and markets have reopened. Bread and milk are back on the shelves. Schools and universities are slowly reopening. Most Tunisians seem eager to return to work and to “relaunch the country,” as they often put it. But no one knows who, in the next few weeks or so, is going to end up in charge. Some want a clean break with the past. Others prefer continuity, without the greedy excesses of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s dictator, recently ousted after 23 years in power.
In Tunis basic services are functioning again after a week of disruption, though a curfew is still in force after 8pm. But in other parts of the country, especially the central region, the epicentre of the uprising that led to Mr Ben Ali’s fall, it will take longer for normality to return. Looters are still active and tension persists, with an uneasy stand-off between angry activists and tainted figures of authority who have been hanging grimly on.
The interim government that is meant to restore order and prepare for presidential elections within six months is fragile. Most tourist hotels are empty. Exports, especially of textile and automotive supplies, have been badly hit. If workers at factories and farms find they have lost wages because of the disruptions, then the grievances that fuelled the uprising in the first place could resurface.
Already the main trade-union federation, which has emerged as an influential political force in the absence of strong opposition parties, has called for strikes and wage increases in certain sectors. But many businessmen are afraid that the union, whose representatives quit the unity government after only a day, is exploiting the febrile situation. General strikes may be called in several cities.
A lot of Tunisians were annoyed that senior ministers from Mr Ben Ali’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (known by its French initials, RCD) still had top jobs in the new government. Most prominent were the prime minister, Mohammed Ghannouchi, who has been a cabinet minister ever since Mr Ben Ali seized power in a bloodless coup in 1987, and the ministers of finance and interior. As a result, five new ministers walked out of the unity government. The finance and interior ministers are now expected to be fired—but it is unclear whether that will satisfy those who feel the RCD should be completely removed from power. Mr Ghannouchi, a technocrat who is said to be untainted by the corruption rife among the Mr Ben Ali’s relatives, further infuriated many Tunisians by admitting that he had spoken to the former president by telephone since his flight to Saudi Arabia.
“This government is an insult to the revolution,” thunders a senior civil servant at the Central Bank of Tunisia. “It is as if we didn’t rebel. They are taking advantage of a political vacuum to consolidate their position and seize power.” A widely held view is that Mr Ghannouchi and other RCD ministers must at least have winked at the corruption surrounding Mr Ben Ali.
The central provinces of Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine witnessed some of the bloodiest clashes between civilians and the police, who are said to have used snipers to kill demonstrators. Protestors from those areas have staged a sit-in in the old casbah of Tunis, near the seat of government. They have already clashed twice with the police, who used tear-gas to control them. This prompted the army chief, General Rachid Ammar, who is credited with persuading Mr Ben Ali to flee, to parley with the protesters. “The army is the guarantor of the revolution,” he told them.
The general’s intervention has heightened his popularity and fuelled speculation that he could head a new government of technocrats. “He is the only person with the credibility among the people to carry out this transition,” says a businessman exasperated by the current government’s apparent inability to explain its aims. “We need a clean break.” But human-rights people are much warier of calls to put the general in charge, even of a civilian government. The idea reminds them of how Mr Ben Ali, who rose to power through the army and the intelligence services, was originally seen as a strongman capable of carrying out a transition to democracy.
Yet other Tunisians are happier to endorse the current government’s mission first of all to restore order as soon as possible. Some say this is a view espoused mainly by the prosperous types living in comfortable villas in Tunis’s northern suburbs. Such people fear social unrest and populist measures that could threaten their economic interests and their physical security.
But many ordinary Tunisians share the fear that, if radicals took over, the far left or Islamists could come to power. Ettajdid, a former Marxist party now run by social democrats that is represented in the new government, echoed this point in its first congress since Mr Ben Ali’s fall. “We must protect the revolution but we must also protect our gains in women’s rights and secularism,” said Ahmed Brahim, one of its new ministers, to loud applause