UGTT 10

Najla Bouden: Poor economic record, outstanding support for repression

Her departure from the Kasbah has been as discreet as her arrival. A late night post on the Office of the President’s Facebook page informed Tunisians of Prime Minister Najla Bouden’s dismissal from office. After less than two years serving at the head of government, this unassuming university professor is leaving the field with an underwhelming track record in confronting socioeconomic issues. What is remarkable about Bouden’s term is how she stood by an increasingly authoritarian regime.

Chahed courts the IMF, Tunisian General Labor Union defiant

On February 25, Youssef Chahed announced the appointment of new heads to several ministries. The UGTT lost not a minute in denouncing what it called a politically-driven and unilateral decision to replace Abid Briki, former UGTT Under Secretary General, with Khalil Ghariani, head of social affairs for the UTICA, as Minister of Public Service. In a statement published on February 26, the UGTT deemed the move a deliberate provocation, and made in the interest of unblocking the second installment of a $2.9 billion loan from the IMF. The conflict, which culminated in Ghariani’s refusal to accept the nomination and the subsequent suspension of the Ministry of Public Service on March 2, is the most recent flare-up in the tenuous relationship between the current government and country’s largest workers union.

Four Years After the Kasbah Sit-Ins – Taking Stock of a Revolutionary Mission Confiscated

If major political forces succeeded in controlling the Kasbah, it was largely due to inadequate management on the part of the youth who were the driving force of the occupation. Indeed, confusion and personal conflicts were factors in the movement’s extinction. By now many participants have had time to ruminate these errors. What remains is to shed led upon the movement’s successes. «Through the sit-ins we imposed an ethics threshold which all political parties had to observe, » Azyz Amami told Nawaat; the youth who took part in the movement demonstrated extreme democratic creativity that surpassed old forms of power.

Strategic vote, non-vote, and the relative victor–Nidaa Tounes

Secularists defeated Islamists is the verdict most commonly reported in international news outlets; Victory and defeat are relative, Tunisian journalists estimate. The politicization of the secularist-Islamist conflict throughout the Ben Ali’s tenure and the increased occurrences of religious violence after the revolution reflect a true conflict that is by no means the defining feature of the country’s democratic transition nor the 2014 elections. The ISIE’s final tally last week represents «a surprising defeat for the Islamist Nahda party» only for those who do not read beyond the titles of foreign news reports that refrain from examining the intricacies of and history behind party politics over the past four years.

Tunisia : The Holy Month of Ramadan – Pockets Empty, Dumpsters Full

Ramadan this year began on Sunday, June 29 and articles are rife with discouraging statistics on the inflation and warnings against over-consumption and waste of foodstuffs purchased in over-abundance. With food, water, electricity, and gas prices already on the rise, the expenses associated with the holy month of fasting compound what is an already unbearable economic burden for many Tunisians.

Machiavelli’s intelligentsia as model for Tunisian stabilization

The mobilizing of society through strikes and the historical UGTT social struggles for workplaces and health services is compulsory to the need of progress required in regulating rights, but what about the condition of slums in the aftermath of the 2012 ? The 2014 Constitutional text, by contrast to what stated in the Egyptian one, does not limit or regulate the Salafist-jihadi inclusion in politics or society.

Dictatorship, Tunisia’s undeserved fate

At a press conference on May 4, Naji Bghouri, the head of the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), was prevented by pro-government journalists from finishing comments in which he mentioned of declining press freedoms in Tunisia. The episode showed that the regime of President Zine al-Abedine ben Ali had lost patience even with a body that it had helped establish in January 2008 to cut the grass out from under the feet of the country’s most critical journalists.