Tunisia Chief Disappointed: Mandate Is Too One-Sided

The recent elections in Tunisia, billed as the first real test of democracy since the ouster of the autocratic Habib Bourguiba 17 months ago, were both a boon and an embarrassment for President Zine Abidine ben Ali, according to Tunisian political analysts and diplomats.

The new 53-year-old leader was sworn in Sunday.

Ben Ali, who has been nudging Tunisia toward greater democracy since forcing Bourguiba into retirement, won an overwhelming mandate to govern in his own right, capturing 99.7% of the 2.1 million votes cast in the April 2 presidential election.

This was not especially surprising, since the highly popular president was endorsed by every political party in Tunisia, including the opposition groups, and ran unopposed for the presidency.

However, the parliamentary elections, which were supposed to bring about the democratic reform the president professes to want, were a major disappointment to those hoping for the emergence of a pluralistic and genuinely representative Parliament.

Won All 141 Constituencies

Amid opposition allegations of widespread election abuses, Ben Ali’s ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally, known as the RDC after its initials in French, swept to victory in all 141 constituencies.

“The results mean that once again Tunisia will have a one-party Parliament with no opposition representation,” a political analyst said.

“The president is disappointed,” a source close to Ben Ali said. “This is not what he wanted.”

There are two opinions in Tunisia as to what the president did want. Ben Ali’s supporters, citing the reforms he has introduced over the past year to liberalize Tunisian political life, insist that his goal is the creation of an authentic Western-style democracy after more than 30 years of Bourguiba’s paternalistic and, toward the end, increasingly erratic and autocratic rule.

The steps Ben Ali has already taken toward this end, they note, have been substantial. He has emptied the jails of political prisoners, abolished the infamous State Security Court, allowed Islamic fundamentalists and other opposition groups to operate more freely and promulgated a new constitution abolishing the president’s right to hold office for life.

Other, more cynical observers, remembering the responsibility that Ben Ali bore as interior minister for the repression that characterized Bourguiba’s last years in office, still doubt his claim to be a born-again democrat.

“Ben Ali doesn’t want an American-style democracy in Tunisia,” a Western diplomat said. “His model is more along the Egyptian lines. He wants an opposition that will keep the ruling party on its toes but that will never be allowed to overtake it.”

While free of the kind of outright fraud that characterized previous elections, the balloting was nevertheless marred by numerous reports of “voting irregularities,” said Khemais Chamari, secretary general of the Tunisian Human Rights League.

“We’re not using the word fraud to describe the elections, but there were so many irregularities that the results must be called into question,” he said.

How much of the blame for this ends up being attached to Ben Ali himself is still unclear. The president, in a conversation overheard at a reception after the election results were announced, insisted that the new Parliament will still be more representative than the old one because its members reflect a much wider spectrum of political views and professional backgrounds than before.

Still, it seems apparent that Ben Ali’s attempts to foster a sense of national reconciliation have received a setback. The National Pact, a kind of gentlemen’s agreement between the government and the opposition groups signed last year, is now defunct, with both sides exchanging bitter recriminations over who was responsible for sabotaging it.

“Things will be a lot more confrontational from now on,” a long-time expert on Tunisia said. “For Ben Ali, the honeymoon is officially over.”