Austerity Plan in Tunisia Puts Democracy at Risk
TUNIS — When Tunisians rose up against their ruler seven years ago, a pair of idealistic young teachers joined in, hoping the protests would usher their North African nation of 10 million into the ranks of the world’s democracies.
But today Adel and Marwa Jaafri are struggling financially as the country’s economy sputters, its currency falters and the government imposes fresh austerity measures.
Mr. Jaafri, 35, a computer science teacher, recently took a second job installing satellite dishes and fixes computers on the side. “I still can’t afford my life,” he said. “We are just making it, but we have taken out a lot of loans. Everything is more expensive — food, schoolbooks for the children.”
Ms. Jaafri, 34, a university professor of computer programming, finished his lament: “Clothes, shoes for the kids. Of course we’re worried. We’re struggling.”
Tunisia is in danger of being crippled by budget- cutting policies that critics say are imperiling the country’s democratic experiment.
A raft of critics are blaming financial measures promoted by international lenders and advisers, and taken up by inexperienced Tunisian politicians, for setting off an economic and political crisis.
It is a pattern that has played out around the world, in Latin America, Asia and recently Greece, as the International Monetary Fund and other lenders demand that governments balance their budgets and open their economies.
In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, economists, activists, and politicians said free-market-style prescriptions have damaged faith in the nascent democracy. One test of that faith came on May 6, with the first municipal elections since the 2010 uprising. Early on, the Islamist-leaning Ennahda Party claimed it scored the most victories, outdoing its secularist rival, Nidaa Tounes, by 5 percent.
Tunisia’s gross domestic product is growing at a tepid 2 percent, while unemployment is at 15.5 percent, or about 30 percent among the young. The Tunisian dinar has fallen 40 percent compared to the euro since 2011, increasing prices for fuel and almost all consumer goods. International ratings agencies have repeatedly lowered Tunisia’s creditworthiness, straining the government’s ability to borrow.
Tunisian leaders say they had few options but to submit to demands by international lenders, to whom they owed $31 billion, equivalent to 60 percent of the G.D.P.
Politicians attribute some of the hardship to the troubles in neighboring Libya, which once provided
Where the Arab Spring began, hope is running out.
jobs and remittances but now poses security threats that damage Tunisia’s tourism industry. They also blame political infighting in Parliament and street protests.
Human rights advocates have voiced alarm over what they see as the country’s authoritarian drift, manifested in prosecutions of politicians, journalists and activists who criticize the police and army.
Analysts say they worry that the country is edging toward a model of autocracy similar to Egypt’s after a 2013 coup by the former military leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“We’re moving close to that, very slowly,” said Fadil Aliriza, a Tunis- based analyst and journalist. “Whether we’re going to have some kind of violent rupture remains to be seen.”