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The Civil Society in the Transition Souhayr BELHASSEN Interview The civil society in the transition Souhayr BELHASSEN Interview with UNDP Civil society played a prominent and remarkable role in the institutional and democratic transition triggered by the departure of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011. The reason why stakeholders independent of the State and separate from any political group were able to be involved in this process from the start was that all the conditions for them to exist and act were in place, despite the constraints under previous regimes. The national movement had, from the beginning, been defined by the notion of Destour: the Constitution. Destour thought takes the Law as its basis and is rooted in the reformist movement, which significantly pre-dates independence and whose efforts to transform society relied on laws and the strengthening of State institutions. The fundamental choices of the first President of the independent Tunisian Republic, Habib Bourguiba, were decisive in shaping that transformation. His ascent to power marked the victory of the movement he embodied – a movement that was modern and open to the West, particularly France – over that of his opponent, Salah Ben Yousef, a nationalist, conservative current focused on the Arab and Muslim world. The change in women's status and the universal implementation of coeducation would, along with judicial reforms (in particular the dissolution of Sharia courts), be the levers Bourguiba used to make Tunisian society different from that of any other state in the Arab world. The Personal Status Code promulgated on 13 August 1956, before the 1959 Constitution had even been adopted, abolished polygamy and legalized divorce. It was the fruit of a brand of State feminism which lasted nearly half a century. Following the uprising of 14 January 2011, that feminism turned into a movement to secularize society. Between Liberalism and Protest: The Origins of Civil Society This framework produced an open, educated elite, which dominated the functioning of the political system from the earliest years of independence, with Bourguiba making French-educated Tunisians the key players in shaping the society he wanted. Since then, those elites have formed an agora that uses its substantial weight to prevent any challenging of Bourguiba's chosen social model, accepted by a large proportion of Tunisians. The flaws in the Bourguiba model quickly became apparent, however. It excluded any forces or individuals perceived as troublesome and ousted any opposition, be it from communists, Arab nationalists, the far-left or elsewhere. The system began to crack from the inside, after the collectivist choice of 1964 was rejected at the 1971 Congress of the Socialist Destourian Party (PSD) in Monastir. Some of the single party's high-ranking members, such as Defence Minister Ahmed Mestiri and Party Leader Hassib Ben Ammar, dissented. Ben Ammar helped to launch the Committee of Freedoms, a precursor of the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LTDH), and founded the opposition newspaper Erraï (The Opinion). Those initiatives laid the foundations for contemporary civil society. The young left-wing opposition activists labelled "Perspectivists" – who were in prison at the time – rejected these organisations, which had sprung from an opening-up of society sanctioned by the regime. But when they were released from prison, some of them ended up moving into these spaces. This idea of moving into spaces conceded by the regime is a recurring theme among the Tunisian elite. The Neo- Destour party (founded by Habib Bourguiba in 1934) might not have admitted the existence of other political forces, but it did always try to include them. That logic of inclusion and negotiation, too, is part of Tunisia's intellectual and political tradition. In the country's modern history, a search for consensus has always prevailed. And the actions of civil society have followed the same pattern. Civil Society Cut Off from the Population But that model was tested by Ben Ali's police state, which instrumentalized the modernizing project, allowing just a few associations to survive as shop window dressings for its own agenda. Civil society, however – chiefly the AFTD (Tunisian Association of Democratic Women) and the LTDH (Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights), which was more exposed because its work concerned the actions of the State and because its network was active countrywide – refused to play the game. The police state under which Tunisia lived for nearly 23 years, suppressed freedoms and human rights. The ruling party, the RCD, moved onto civil society's turf, using fake NGOs (nicknamed AGOs, or Actually Governmental Organisations) to spread its propaganda in favour of the repressive and impoverishing policies of the government, while genuine human rights activists and the rare independent associations to be given legal recognition, such as the LTDH and the ATFD, were systematically hounded and prevented from operating freely. Several associations were unable to secure legal status even though their work was recognized nationally and internationally, such as the National Council for Freedoms in Tunisia (CNLT), the Organization Against Torture in Tunisia (OCTT), the International Association in Support of Political Prisoners in Tunisia (AISPPT) and the association "Freedom and Fairness". Professional bodies and trade union associations were obliged to make pacts with power to avoid being banned or reduced to mere window-dressing. The regime's representatives, organized into satellite associations and overseen by the political police, began to tail human rights advocates in Tunisia and beyond, not to mention the shameful campaigns conducted to systematically denigrate such individuals by crushing any attempt at mediation through associations, trade unions or political groups. Any form of protest or demand was brutally repressed by imprisonment, torture or even assassination. Despite these constraints, the actions of true activists remained etched in the people's memory, leaving them with a desire to speak out and organize, and thus serving as an example of political engagement that they might follow in the future. Civil society may have been worn out by the time the revolution came, but it had a knowledge and understanding of what was really happening in the country, as well as a national and international network of contacts often cultivated at disproportionate personal risk. Gafsa 2008: The Dress Rehearsal The revolt in the Gafsa mining area in south-western Tunisia provided the mould for the 2010-2011 uprising. It sprang from a spontaneous protest against a list of appointments marred by favouritism in Redeyef in January 2008, a reaction that gave form to the exasperation felt by the population. Very quickly, the local leadership of the UGTT (General Union of Tunisian Workers), a powerful trade union organization which the government had always tried to keep in its bosom without necessarily succeeding 100% of the time, began to coordinate the movement. Videos spread the news beyond the usual circles of activists. Lawyers were the first to get involved, especially after the arrests of a first wave of trade unionists in March 2008, who were released in April after pressure from demonstrations and, in particular, the wives of the imprisoned activists. In June, however, the government's attempts to quash the uprising left one person dead and twenty-eight injured and, following a second wave of arrests, thirty-eight trade unionists were sentenced in a group trial held in November, during which many lawyers rallied to their cause. For the first time, the population and civil society were operating hand in hand, with the actions they took firmly rooted in reality. Having started out as a local situation, the movement had now become a challenge to the regime, following a series of injustices which had made it intolerable. That uprising was quashed, but it served as a dress rehearsal for those of December 2010 and January 2011. From an Opening-up of Politics to an Institutional Transformation When the uprising began in Sidi Bouzid on 17 December 2010, the first to grasp what the events meant and to get involved in the movement were local lawyers and trade unionists, who had learned the lessons of 2008. Social networks, too, immediately seized on the event, creating the huge impact we all remember. The young people who brought such networks to life quickly demanded that the regime be brought down and the authorities found themselves overwhelmed by a movement they could no longer control. The authorities were caught off-guard by this unprecedented means of self-expression, and a lack of structure prevented it from recovering. Traditional civil society was discovering a new form of mobilization via social networks, which began with the protest against Internet censorship, nicknamed "Amar 404", in May 2010. We had not fully appreciated the extent of its influence. When former ATFD president Bochra Bel Haj Hamida was invited to appear on the Nessma TV channel on 31 December, on a programme devoted to Sidi Bouzid, where Mohamed Bouazizi had set himself on fire a few weeks earlier, we understood that the authorities were taking the crisis seriously and that they needed to give a sign that they were opening up in order to put minds at rest.After Ben Ali's departure, Foued Mebazaa, President of the lower house since 1997, became President of the Republic in accordance with the Constitution. He kept Mohamed Ghannouchi on as Prime Minister and reappointed some of Ben Ali's ministers, thus preserving a sense of institutional continuity. The first government he proposed was even supposed to include a few figures from the opposition and from the UGTT, who ultimately changed their minds the next day. Traditional civil society continued to hang on the coattails of the small opposition parties. A few hours after the dictator fled, the premises of the LTDH in Tunis and in inland towns and cities were finally free to open their doors after years of being obstructed and surrounded by the police.
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