Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Thousands of Tunisians protest against price hikes
TUNIS, Tunisia — More than 2,000 Tunisians demonstrated Sunday, demanding a repeal of punishing price hikes on the seventh anniversary of the revolt that sparked the Arab Spring revolution.
To placate protesters angered by a new finance law raising prices of essential goods, Tunisian authorities announced plans to boost aid to the needy. The measures announced Saturday night weren’t enough for many of the people marking the revolution anniversary in the capital.
“We’re going to keep putting pressure on the government until the revision of the new finance law that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer,” Hamma Hammami, leader of the Popular Front, a coalition of leftist parties, told the crowd.
The concessions announced Saturday were intended to cushion the impact of reforms the government has promised under its 2016 deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $2.9 billion loan.
“Government actions are just painkillers and cannot deal with the situation,” Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, head of the opposition Democratic Movement, said in an interview Sunday. “The Tunisian ship will sink” unless solutions are found, he said.
Demonstrations against the law degenerated into days of turmoil across Tunisia last week, leaving one person dead, scores injured and police stations and stores damaged or pillaged. Nearly 780 people were arrested.
President Beji Caid Essibsi, in a speech Sunday, defended the aid measures as “better than nothing.”
“Tunisia doesn’t have great potential,” but it does have its people, Essibsi said. It was important to “know how to invest these modest possibilities” and distribute them equitably, he said.
Essebsi inaugurated a youth center Sunday in a housing project outside Tunis that was a site of the recent unrest. The building, burned during the 2011 revolution, was renovated with private funds. Essebsi called it a “model.”
“The year 2018 will be marked by our focus on youth,” the 91-year-old president said, noting chronic joblessness in Tunisia, including for some 250,000 university graduates.
Prime Minister Youssef Chahed is to allocate about $40 million to help 200,000 of the neediest families plus free health care for the jobless, Social Affairs Minister Mohamed Trabelsi announced after a Saturday night Cabinet meeting.
The Tunisian economy has struggled since President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled into exile on Jan. 14, 2011, transforming the country into a budding democracy that inspired the Arab Spring revolution — then defied it by being the only country to keep its transition peaceful.
But six governments later, loans weigh on the economy, extremist attacks have sapped the important tourism sector, and regions far from the capital, where the revolution was ignited, remain neglected.
The jobless rate is officially above 15 percent and stands above 25 percent in some regions, with vast areas of the interior still marginalized. With inflation officially above 6 percent, the 2018 finance law raising prices and adding new taxes brought people into the streets.
The Popular Front and associations had called for peaceful protests to tell the country’s current leaders they have failed to honor the hope for social and economic justice behind the revolution.
“We are proud of our freedoms, but we are far from the goals of the revolution concerning dignity and betterment of the population’s conditions,” opposition lawmaker Ghazi Chaouachi said during an interview Sunday.
Chaouachi said he hoped for change by “keeping pressure on the government to realize minimum expectations.”
The revolution was sparked by the death of a fruit and vegetable seller in the central town of Sidi Bouzid who set himself afire Dec. 10, 2010, in apparent anger and despair over mistreatment by police who upset his cart. That region and others outside the capital have a history of neglect by central authorities — and were the focus of promises for change by leaders of Tunisia’s new era.
The democratic transition gave Tunisia a new constitution, opened the way to free elections and reinforced equality among sexes — all while Tunisia battled deadly extremist attacks, including on tourists at the famed Bardo Museum and at a resort hotel outside the seaside town of Sousse.
But some essentials have been ignored. Frustration was in full view last week when small demonstrations ballooned and then degenerated into theft, pillaging and car-burning in some places as momentum grew. A police crackdown stemmed the protests by week’s end.
“We’re going to keep putting pressure on the government until the revision of the new finance law that makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.” — Hamma Hammami, leader of the Popular Front