At the end of several weeks of popular discontent, caused by a serious deterioration in the economic and health situation, which reached its peak on July 25 – the anniversary of the establishment of the Republic in Tunisia – with a day of protest calling for dismissal of the government and the dissolution of parliament, marked by the sacking of several headquarters of Ennahda, the Islamist party in power, especially in poor towns in the south of the country; President Kaïs Saïed has decided to deliver a radical “halt” to the political and social crisis shaking Tunisia.
Tunisia’s misfortune makes Qatar’s colonial happiness. Indeed, it is against the backdrop of a country decimated by the coronavirus – the death rate is the highest in Africa – that a bill has been passed allowing the “Qatar Fund For Development” to manage the financial interests between Tunisia and Qatar. A real treaty that will allow Doha to intervene directly in the Tunisian economy, with considerable advantages for the backers of Islamism.
Strange as it may sound, ten years after the “Jasmine Revolution”, the millions stashed in Switzerland by former Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his clan have still not made their way to Tunis.
Everyone thought they knew Tunisia when the revolution broke out in January 2011, sweeping away the experts’ reassuring analyses of the “Tunisian exception”. In 2021, the same experts, or their emulators, woke up with a start after having served us for years the same ideological broth, seasoned to the taste of the day. The new “Tunisian exception” would thus allow the country of jasmine to escape the fate of other Arab revolutions, thanks to the famous “democratic transition”, guarantor of the political wisdom of Carthage. Now, if it did indeed exist, at a time when intelligence held the reins of the revolutionary chariot, particularly with the great jurist Yadh Ben Achour, who chaired the High Authority for Political Reform, the “transition” has seriously slowed down over time.
Beylik: that’s the word we don’t want to hear anymore in Tunis. Beylik, domain of the bey, vassal of the sultan. Beylik, province or Ottoman “regency”. A word that comes from the well of the centuries, a return of the historical repressed. It was furiously written in the country’s media after the unexpected visit to Tunis of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who came to ask President Kais Saied to support a Turkish intervention in Libya in support of the ill-named “Government of National Accord” of Faiez Sarraj against General Khalifa Haftar. By opening Matmata airport to Turkish military aircraft. But yes, of course, it made sense: the tiny and strategic Tunisia could not but acquiesce to Ankara’s desires. In the spirit of the neo-Great Turk, it had to become again the vassal of the old days.
