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16 1. TUNISIA’S WALL HAS FALLEN NADIA MARZOUKI For the first time in decades, Tunisia is free of one-man rule. The extraordinary events of December 2010 and January 2011 were nothing less than a political revolution: The consistent pressure of popular fury forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali first to make an unprecedented promise to relinquish power; then pushed him to step down; and finally halted an attempt at unconstitutional transfer of power, setting the stage for a transition to electoral democracy. In the early months of 2011, the nature of this political transition was still in question. Three days after Ben Ali’s January 14 departure to exile in Saudi Arabia, the caretaker head of government Mohammed al-Ghannouchi announced a“national unity”cabinet composed heavily of members of the long-time ruling party, the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique (RCD), who initially retained the ministries of interior, defense, foreign affairs,and finance.Opposition parties classified as “legal”under Ben Ali also acquired posts. The announcement came after a night of gunfights reported around the presidential palace, opposition party headquarters, and major banks, as well as drive-by shootings elsewhere in the capital of Tunis. The Guardian, citing human rights activists, attributed the attacks to militias made up of security men loyal to Ben Ali,while Ghannouchi said on state television that “the coming days will show who is behind them.” Much more consequential were the protesters outside the presidential palace and the Casbah Square on January 17 voicing their anger at reports that RCD members would be part of the interim cabinet. The protests were dispersed with water cannons, but popped back up when the cabinet was named. Several opposition members of the interim cabinet , three of them affiliated with the countrywide labor federation, the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), promptly resigned their posts amidst the renewed “RCD out!”demonstrations. Ghannouchi and others tried to quell the unrest by announcing their own resignations from the RCD, though not from the interim government; that event came three weeks later after larger demonstrations and the deaths of several protesters at the hands of the police. Despite the unrest, the original and remarkable achievement of Tunisian demonstrators prevailed: Ben Ali would not be back. “Bread, Water, Yes; Ben Ali, No” The fast-paced and utterly unexpected fall of Tunisia’s dictator originated in what at first 17 looked like a jacquerie of hungry, disenfranchised youths. Quickly, however, and spontaneously , the protests became overtly political as well as economic.They were certainly not the result of top-down manipulation by a specific party pursuing a ready-made political agenda, as the regime tried to pretend. On December 17,2010 Mohammed Bouazizi,a twenty-six-year old street vendor from the town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire after police confiscated his merchandise, telling him he did not have a permit to sell his goods. The desperate gesture of this underemployed university graduate immediately sparked protests throughout the country. Anger at the status quo ignited within Tunisians of all generations, social classes, professional categories, and ideological sensibilities, despite the forceful police crackdowns, which likely killed some two hundred people. (The UN said on January 19 it could confirm some hundred deaths, including forty-two in a prison fire that claimed the lives of many protesters, but this number was almost certainly too low.) The uprising began as a movement against unemployment and high prices,particularly for food,but it rapidly transformed into a revolution demanding civil liberties and the ouster of the man who had long suppressed them. “Bread, water, yes; Ben Ali, no,”the crowds chanted. Accustomed to setting his own schedule, Ben Ali was compelled by the protests to address the people three times in one month. He first attempted, on December 28, to pass off the unrest in the usual manner of autocrats as the work of “extremists.” On January 11, chastened, he pledged to create three hundred thousand jobs, hoping to calm the streets with state largesse.Two days later, he finally acknowledged the political nature of the protests , telling the country he would not run for reelection in 2014, freeing all protesters who had been arrested and lifting restrictions on the media. The unanimous verdict of the Tunisian people was: too little,too late.In the early afternoon of January 14,Prime Minister Ghannouchi announced that the president was temporarily unable to perform his functions and that he would take over until new...

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