Tribune. In a column published by The world on October 10 (“On the regression of rights in Tunisia, the international community must no longer look away”), a collective of lawyers, intellectuals and journalists from different countries calls for “An energetic reaction from the international community” faced with the deterioration of the Tunisian political situation.
The signatories of this forum, all perfectly honorable, are certainly animated by the best feelings. However, they did not pay sufficient attention to the ambiguities of the text they endorsed.
Their assessment on “The authoritarian hardening and regression of rights in Tunisia” seems to me to be just as well founded in principle as it is open to criticism in its recitals. A reader unfamiliar with Tunisian affairs risks drawing the conclusion that “The intervention of the army” constitutes the determining factor of the coup by a president, Kaïs Saïed, against the Parliament. Nothing allows him to take into account the extent of popular support given to the president in his stranglehold on the levers of control and the symbols of the State.
Plebiscite dimension
The deterioration of the economic, social and health conditions of the country has focused discontent on a Parliament mired in a game of factions, sometimes violent, and correlatively on the majority party, the Islamist movement Ennahda. The president contributed directly to the government paralysis by opposing any initiative likely to threaten his home ground. He nevertheless won the stake by acting as ” Saviour “.
It is precisely this plebiscite dimension that poses a problem, from a double point of view.
On the one hand, it augurs well for a political regression fraught with dangers.
On the other hand, it places criticisms of this regression in the wrong direction. How to defend political freedom among popular layers animated by the egalitarian aspiration and the detestation of the political elites? Certainly not by denouncing, very prematurely, “A return to the intellectual stone age” and above all by appealing to the ” International community “.
Moreover, it is permissible to wonder about the content of this supposed international community. Is it that of the States? And then from which states? The forum in question does not mention it, preferring to drape itself in a floating signifier. It is necessary to interpret and to consider that the appeal aims, nolens volens, Tunisia’s partners, in other words, the United States, Europe and international donor institutions.
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