Tunisia’s revolution in 14 years: ‘The ruler has no clothes’ | The Arab Spring

Fourteen years ago, on January 14, 2011, Tunisians filled Habib Bourguiba Boulevard, a central street in Tunis, with cries of freedom and dignity as they celebrated the ouster of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He had fled the country and announced his resignation after 28 days of civil disobedience expressed by public “activities” in almost all cities of the country, caused by the tragic self-harm of fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi in the city of Sidi Bouzid.

The victory of the Tunisian people against their tyrannical oppressor and his suffocating, corrupt regime was so remarkable, it was so dramatic that it inspired a wave of Arab uprisings throughout the region.

In major cities from Yemen to Morocco, millions of freedom-hungry residents have joined the Tunisian “occupiers” of Bourguiba Boulevard to celebrate the overthrow of their dictatorship and call for their freedom. With the discovery by the Tunisian people of the success of “karama” (dignity) and “hurriyya” (freedom) a new movement was born that put the entire region on the revolutionary path of “tahrir” (freedom).

More than a decade later, the legacy of this uprising, known as the “Arab Spring”, is very mixed. One Arab country, Syria, which began its own revolutionary journey just after Tunisia on March 30, 2011, armed rebels overthrew dictator Bashar Al-Assad last month, after 14 years of devastating and losing war. In some Arab Spring countries, including Tunisia, revolution came quickly but has been short-lived with authoritarianism, repression and conflict re-entering the picture soon after the initial success of the rebel masses.

All this, does not take away the moral and political heroism of the 2011 revolution. The moral hallmark of this revolution – such as the dramatic victory of a once-silenced population against some of the world’s most violently politicized states – has staying power.

The new social and political patterns of public life that emerged after these revolutions have endured in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab region. The body politic of the state prior to 2011 was dominated by the political collapse of authoritarian rulers and undermined by excessive coercion and bureaucratic power and exclusionary practices. This uprising emboldened the people of the region to demand a say about the nature of their rule and forever changed the way we talk about and analyze the relationship between the state and post-colonial Arab society.

To this day, January 14, 2011, remains a historic moment that ignited the flame of morality, the cry for freedom as it were, in the masses that filled the Arab region. It embedded itself in the hearts, minds and imaginations of Arab youth caught up in the sound of a better future. The Tunisian revolution and those that followed it in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen gained inspiration, confidence and moral strength from the collapse of all previously thought impregnable, populist instruments of dictatorship.

However, it cannot be denied that the banners of freedom and dignity placed on the ruins of fallen empires quickly replaced the rebellion.

After the overthrow of dictatorial rulers in 2011, the appeal of revolution quickly disappeared in many Arab Spring countries. This has not happened because of the revolutionary idea itself which fell into disapproval among the Arab communities that were “square citizens”. This is not the case because opponents of the revolution, including those who fought for electoral democracy (or even those who supported “Islamic democracy”, like Tunisia’s Rachid Ghannouchi), were given enough time to prove or disprove their worth. Instead, the swing of the anti-revolutionary pendulum from Tunisia to Egypt resulted in the “revolutionaries” being forced to defend themselves and pressured to abandon their “revolutionary” demands. Indeed, over time, the protests and revolutionaries have gradually deteriorated in all cases.

In places like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen with their new freedom, political parties began to deviate from the original goals of their democratic beginnings. The revival of old forms of political division, economic and social divisions, armed forces and organized tensions involving deep state actors and ordinary actors is what led to this deviation. Meanwhile, the wealth gap between rich and poor that had created the initial cry for freedom and dignity remained the same. This multi-faceted crisis led to the near death of the real revolutionary movement, i.e. the complete breakdown and overthrow of the totalitarian regimes.

The result has been the creation of so-called Arab Spring quasi-democracies called “mixed states”, with mixed powers, with very few ideas that the Arab road called for during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Today, the prisons of some of these “democracies” are full of political activists accused of “conspiracy to undermine the power of the state” – stubborn charges that many thought were consigned to the dustbin of history after the 2011 protests. The law, which was one of the demands of the underground, has been abandoned, and the law itself is being promoted against the actors who should be contributing to the nation from the open public space, if not the democratic parliament. Instead of using their knowledge to benefit the state, they rot in prison for threatening the powers that be after the coup. Such a purge casts doubt on people’s minds as to whether a revolution that can bring a complete break from the authoritarian practices of the past will ever exist.

Under such a democratic backsliding, where the freedom to assemble, participate, compete and speak is constantly at risk, elections themselves inevitably lose credibility. The low voter turnout speaks volumes for the breakdown of democracy in elections held in places like Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia.

In many Arab Spring states, the political opposition has the same democratic shortcomings and weaknesses as the ruling authorities, leading to the belief of many voters that elections are futile even if they are fair and free on the outside. Intra-party democracy remains weak, if not non-existent. Those who lead political parties and civil society tend to cling to power and oppose the democratic exchange of leadership positions. As a result, those who made the changes that happened in 2011 – the people – lost interest in the electoral process.

Of course, the blame for the collapse of democracy since the 2011 revolution should not be placed solely on deep states or domestic political leaders.

Arab authorization has been renewed and the motivation for revolution has been made more than once over the last 14 years by the deals that post-revolutionary Arab governments have made with Western powers and institutions from the United States and the European Union to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). . For example, in countries such as Lebanon and Egypt, the IMF played a major role in keeping dictatorships alive by financing the governments, reducing any hopes their people might have for new leaders or revolutionaries, for long-term solutions to their economic and political problems. .

The Arab street has not forgotten the massacre of Rabaa in August 2013, when the security forces killed hundreds of supporters of the deposed President Mohamed Morsi, who was elected democratically. And they don’t care or know about the Israeli carnage that has been carried out by the West in Gaza and the Arab regions that they have not been able to stop for 15 long months.

The Arab communities know very well that their states that have experience or would be depots of the ruler are now no more than terrorism or migrant guards. They protect the borders and want to ensure “stability” that is not found in the interests of regional and Western leaders.

This is, perhaps, the most important and lasting legacy of the Tunisian revolution and the wider Arab Spring. “The Emperor” is not defeated, of course. But he is exposed. Just like the vain ruler in the famous history of Denmark, the nudity of the Arab states and their rulers has become impossible to hide. There are no clothes. There is no cover. There is no “democracy”, deliberative politics, power sharing or free citizenship. The protests have created a new state-public relationship in the Arab world and let the cat out of the bag: The ruler has no clothes.

Fourteen years after the Tunisian revolution, democracy is still lacking in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world. But so are all the clothes of kings, and the Arab nations have taken notice. The legacies of the revolution continue.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.