Tunisia Forms a Government and Becomes the Laboratory of the Arab Spring

Yesterday, Moncef Marzouki was elected president of Tunisia by the first popularly elected Tunisian Assembly.  It took exactly one year from the day the dictator Ben Ali was deposed until Tunisia installed its new president, who took his oath of office and promised to be faithful to the ideals of the revolution that had brought him to office, as well as to Tunisian national interests, laws and institutions.

President Marzouki, 66, is a long-time militant for human rights and the end of dictatorship in his country.  

He promised to fight to improve the lives of Tunisians and to work to guarantee health care, education, employment, workers’ rights and women’s rights.

President Marzouki also honored the martyrs fallen in the fight to free Tunisia from Ben Ali’s dictatorship, saying that without their blood, nothing could have succeeded.

He noted that the world considers Tunisia as something of a laboratory to see if democracy and popular government can follow the Arab Spring revolutions of the last year. In this regard, Marzouki called on the opposition parties to participate in government and not be content to watch from the sidelines, as they had done when the Assembly elected Mr. Marzouki on Monday, voting with blank ballots.

“Our mission is to promote our Arab-Moslem identity and to be open toward the rest of the world, and to protect the rights of both women who choose to be veiled and those who choose not to wear the veil.”  

In the elections that formed the first elected Tunisian Assembly, the largest block of seats was won by Ennahda, an Islamist party, which forms the majority in the Assembly because of its coalition with two leftist parties, the CPR and Ettakatol.

For this reason, the leader of Ennahda, Hamadi Jebali, was charged by the new president to form a government. Mr. Jebali is 62 and also a long-time opponent of Ben Ali. Jebali spent 15 years in prison because of his opposition to the dictator.     

The new government will have to be approved by the Assembly.

But, once approved, the new head of government will have sweeping executive powers under the new Tunisian Constitution. In cooperation with the president, he will be able to create, change and name the heads executive departments (called ministries in most parliamentary governments), modify governmental institutions and name leading bureaucrats to head them, and to issue edicts (much like executive orders in the United States).  

This week, the two men are working together to agree on the names of the first ministers who will be responsible for the major functions in Tunisia’s new government.

The government will have a lot of work to do to reduce the 18% unemployment rate, establish a working economy and find the resources to improve the lives of poverty of ordinary Tunisians.

So, while we may wonder and worry about what an Islamist government will be like and what its priorities will be, Tunisian President Marzouki is right when he says that Tunisia is a laboratory for the aftermath of the Arab Spring.    

We should watch and hope and pray that Tunisia gets it right - that human rights and women’s rights and economic success and employment make Tunisia a model for Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, if ever the world manages to dislodge Bashar al-Assad and his clique of hoodlums.