A year ago Tunisia became one of first countries, where Arab Spring began, and now it has all chances to be the first country, where the situation becomes stable. At least, the current authorities of the North African state hope for it. Yesterday Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Tunisia in Moscow, Ali Gutali, held a press-conference and told journalists about the current situation in the country.
Autumn 2011 elections to the Constitutional Assembly were held. Ali Gutali emphasized that these were the first democratic and transparent elections in the whole of Tunisian history and these elections involved more than 100 parties. These were elections to a constitutional assembly, not presidential and not parliamentary. The aim was to write a project of the new constitution and then for new laws. The elections ended with the victory of the Ennahda party with around 40% of the votes. There are some people who think that the current situation in Tunisia, after the election that brought to power the Ennahda party, is influenced by religious factors that can hinder democracy. But this is a civil party, it is not Islamic, it does not intend to build an Islamic state or to return to Sharia law in legislative life. After the elections the Constitutional Assembly elected its head, the representative of the Ettakatol party, Mustafa Ben Jafar. Afterwards there were the presidential elections, Moncef Marzouki was elected and was responsible for creating the government.
The obvious task of the government is to normalize work and economic life, to stop the strikes that took place in our country after the revolution. Ali Gutali noted that the characteristic feature of this revolution was that its main participants were young, educated people who know modern technologies. They did not have any leadership, but managed to have this self-organization and as a result of these events the president had to escape. The ambassador separated the reasons for the revolution into three groups.
The economic reasons: the spread of unemployment, especially among young people with university degrees; the unfair distribution of wealth; the marginalization of the regions; the widespread corruption.
The political reasons: the absence of democracy, freedom of speech, the monopolization of power by the Destour party.
The objective reasons: the self-consciousness of the Tunisian people, especially among the educated people. Geographically Tunisia is very close to Europe, therefore our young people follow events there and of course they were interested in the spread of European democratic values.
According to Ali Gutali, the transition to democracy is going calmly and constructively, with a sense of responsibility. The Tunisian economy has always been based on market principles and this created our national wealth, but the distribution of this wealth was unfair. The centre of power was located in the capital, while the provinces were kept away from the development. Most of the wealth was concentrated in the coastal zone. Only the coastal region could enjoy the fruits of this development, while all the others were backward. So the strategy is based on the principle of the involvement of the regions in the decision-making process concerning the new projects and investments and so to make this process homogeneously spread across all the territory of the country. Ali Gutali stated that Tunisia has its principal positions in foreign policy. They are based on the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Tunisia is against military interventions.
