Tunisia is where it all started. In December 2010, protests began among Tunisians unhappy about their employment prospects and the political restrictions imposed upon them. This was the opening salvo of the Arab Spring, a period of upheaval and often conflict that has since embroiled Syria, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, and had consequences from Morocco to Saudi Arabia.
Among those countries where dissent led to revolution, there is only one so far where it has led to a peaceful, functioning democracy. Not Egypt, where the ousting of Mubarak instead led to a situation where a democratically elected but internationally unloved Islamist party was deposed and many of its supporters condemned to death, and where unfavourable journalism leads to incarceration. Not Libya, which is an unstable mess. And obviously not civil war-torn Syria. Only in Tunisia could one say that revolution has been replaced by free elections, and something that looks like an economy moving forward with a democratic process. And now, Tunisia’s presidential election is underway.
The thing is, even if Tunisia is a relative success story, it is a long way from having been a smooth one. In 2013, two opposition politicians were assassinated. The Nahda government that won the first free parliamentary elections in October 2011 had to step down two years later for a caretaker government. Al Qaeda holds a presence in the country’s Chaambi Mountains and thousands of Tunisians are believed to be fighting in Syria and Iraq. Economic growth has stalled – under 3% in 2013 – and unemployment stands at over 17%. According to Salamanca Group, 30% of young people with university degrees are unemployed. Business processes are difficult, investor confidence is low and corruption is still widespread.
“On paper,” says Salamanca Group analyst Albert Arbuthnott, “Tunisia should be an exemplary North African investment destination. It is strategically located between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, it has a young and educated workforce, and it is the leading north African industrial exporter to the European Union. But investor confidence has been hit.”
On the plus side, Tunisia’s parliamentary elections passed in October with much to be positive about. It was, to a large extent, calm, and more than 60% of registered voters chose to take part. Both of Tunisia’s major parties, Nidaa Tounes and Nahda, won significant numbers of seats, though neither won an outright majority. Logically, a coalition is needed to represent all voices, and it remains to be seen if that can be managed effectively, but the outcome has been broadly positive.
There is no reason to expect violence around the presidential election – in which, at the time of writing, 70 candidates had dropped to about 27, ahead of a run-off in December – and the positive view is that this will give further evidence of Tunisia’s emergence as a peaceful and successful democracy. But even here, there are challenges. Arbuthnott notes that there is a chance that Nidaa Tounes, a party that has only just gained a sense of legitimacy through the parliamentary elections, might unravel if Beji Caid Essebsi, their leader and the expected winner of the presidential elections, fails to win. A separate fear is that Essebsi does win, and then imposes a crackdown against Islamists, similar to what has happened in Egypt. An extension of that fear is the sense that if Nahda and Islamist parties are marginalised, it could drive them towards extremism, although Arbuthnott points out that when in power Nahda proved itself to be far more moderate than Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, seeking to share power, respecting Tunisia’s relatively progressive laws on women’s rights, and making no attempt to impose Shariah law.
In other words, as well as an expression of the people’s voice at work, the presidential election also represents another challenge to be passed. And the democratic process in itself is not going to be enough to keep disillusioned Tunisians happy. The successful president and parliamentarians must form a government that has a plan to fix the sluggish economy – otherwise many young Tunisians may found themselves wondering: well what was the point of the Arab spring?