Tunisia

[crackerjack]

What next?

Liberalisation?
Islamisation?
Another Algeria?
Brief shuffling of the pack before the next dictator?

Haven't a clue. Anyone here know anything about it?

And since the causes of this revolution – food prices rises, authoritarianism and corruption – seem widespread in the Arab world, is Tunisia its Poland 1989, as one if its exiled Islamists claimed on Newsnight t'other night?

 

[Sectionfive]

I dread to think whats going on inside the country to be honest.


Good thread here with twitter links and all the rest.

worked in Tunisia several times in the 80s and 90s and also in other African countries.

First on Tunisia, the French ordained effective dictator Burgiba ruled the country as personal fiefdom with French investments even while he was in a coma for about a year!! In fact, before he was officially declared dead the islamists had moved into take over the politics - typically it was easy to get a lunch during Rhamadan in the early 80s by the 90s you couldn't, except in your hotel, in a closed room....
The IMF were there from the beginning, but in effect they did what the French wanted. The IMF's recipe was agreed by all the big boys, create market economies and ensure the former occupying power's investments were protected.

[..]The base problem is that the regime hasn't been able to control education as much as it would like and the disenfranchised grads are pissed off. The other 'mistake' (which has happened elsewhere) was to enable mobile phone networks and consequently vids appear on YouTube.....The network has been closed these last few days.

 

[grizzleb]

Obviously Liberalisation would be the the ideal, but my cynicism leads me to think a shuffling of the pack is most likely. Would like to see some good analysis from someone who knows Tunisian politics etc...

 

[Dr Awesome]

Obviously Liberalisation would be the the ideal, but my cynicism leads me to think a shuffling of the pack is most likely. Would like to see some good analysis from someone who knows Tunisian politics etc...

Apparently there's a gun battle going on outside the opposition parties HQ now.
I wonder how far things will be allowed to spiral if indeed that's what ends up happening.

 

[crackerjack]

signs of spreading
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jan/18/tunisia-crisis-live-updates

and perhaps of desperation, as the shortest-lived coalition in history falls apart

 

[sufi]

finding the reporting very negative compared to the multicoloured revolutions in europe, highlighting casualties as much as possible & enthusiastically predicting more bloodshed and grim anarchy, when there's no particular reason to expect any worse outcome than say czech or elsewhere,
particularly on bbc, less so on al-jaz as it has a lot of tunisi staff apparently,
we'll see

 

[zhao]

How The General soundtracked the 'jasmine revolution' in Tunisia

In the week before the downfall of the Tunisian president, 30 plain-clothes police officers arrived at the family home of Hamada Ben-Amor in the coastal city of Sfax and arrested him.

The 22-year-old rapper – known to his fans as The General – was among a number of prominent dissidents and activists targeted by police in a last-ditch attempt to suppress the demands for change that were echoing around the north African country.

His crime: an incendiary single, put out days earlier entitled President, Your People Are Dying, in which he railed against the failure of the authorities to address mounting unemployment and poverty.

 

[hucks]

Fucking hell now Egypt, too

 

[Dr Awesome]

Crickey, must be more sweaty than usual in Cairo right now. Banning political protests sounds a bit like spitting into the wind... although it could just be an excuse for a more "martial" crackdown.
Lucky for the Egyptians it's not the late 60's and Isreal probably can't be fucked invading during the middle of a political crises. Now that would throw the Arab world into chaos.

 

[hob]

Nice to see Hilary prioritising the fundamental human rights of Egyptians. ElBaradei's comments on CNN sum it up:

"I was stunned to hear secretary Clinton saying the Egyptian government is stable. And I ask myself at what price is stablity. Is it on the basis of 29 years of martial law? Is it on the basis of 30 years of [an] ossified regime? Is it on the basis of rigged elections? That's not stability, that's living on borrowed time.

"When you see today almost over 100,000 young people getting desperate, going to the streets, asking for their basic freedom, I expected to hear from secretary Clinton stuff like democracy, human rights, basic freedom - all the stuff the US is standing for."

Tomorrow's demonstrations could be interesting!