There were celebrations in France's Tunisian community at the departure of the country's former president last weekend, along with calls for the government to explain its support for his regime, writes David Tresilian in Paris Following the sudden collapse of the regime led by former Tunisian president Zein Al-Abidine Bin Ali last weekend and the flight of Bin Ali and his family into exile, there were celebrations among members of France's Tunisian community across the country, with thousands gathering in Paris to celebrate the former president's departure. France has one of the largest Tunisian communities of any European country, and thousands of French nationals have business or other interests in Tunisia. Even greater numbers regularly visit the country, just a few hours by air from Paris, attracted by Tunisia's famous tourist industry and the fact that business, education and other areas are conducted in French. However, even before news of Bin Ali's flight had filtered through last Friday afternoon, voices were being raised in France at the French government's apparently unconditional support for his regime. Tunisia has widely been considered to be an economic success story and a showcase for French and European cooperation with the countries of the Arab Maghreb, particularly when contrasted with the historically difficult relations European countries have sometimes had with neighbouring Libya and Algeria. However, the weeks of protest that had led up to Bin Ali's departure last weekend had forced many French citizens to become aware of the reality behind the country's reputation as a comparatively cheap tourist destination and an ideal place for European companies to set up operations. During the protests, beginning in mid December following the death by burning of a young Tunisian man, Mohamed Bouazizi, in the central Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisian police used live ammunition against Tunisian demonstrators, leaving an estimated 78 people dead. Yet, the government of French President Nicolas Sarkozy did not condemn the violence in Tunisia or criticise the actions of the Tunisian authorities. As late as 11 January, just a few days before Bin Ali was forced to flee the country, the French foreign minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, told the country's parliament that the French government was willing to train Tunisian security forces in "French savoir-faire " that could be used "to control security situations of this type." Following the collapse of the Tunisian regime on Friday and the flight of the former president into exile in Saudi Arabia, criticism was directed at the French government for its political and diplomatic support for the former regime. In its weekend edition, the French newspaper Le Monde wrote in its front-page editorial that "regimes like that of Bin Ali finish badly, and there is nothing worse than refusing to see them for what they are." "Braving torture, beatings and other abuses, the Tunisian opposition tried to draw attention [to the situation in the country] without ever being heard in Paris. The French establishment, from François Mitterand to Jacques Chirac to Nicolas Sarkozy, did not want to hear." What had happened in Tunisia, the newspaper said, was the collapse, "like a house of cards, of the police-state autocracy presided over by president Zein Al-Abidine Bin Ali." While this could not have been foreseen, the protests that led to it were predictable, the result of years of "fear and humiliation that had too long been suffered in silence." "The Bin Ali regime had shut down any possibility of political or social expression. Everything was controlled by the authorities, including those few political formations that were allowed, as well as unions, the legal system, the country's associations, the press and the publishing industry." "The Tunisia of Bin Ali was not only a brutal police state. It was also a kleptocracy," the newspaper said. "The 'family,' as Tunisians put it when speaking of those close to the president, and particularly of people close to his wife, had taken control of much of the country's economy -- banking, real estate, tourism and so on -- using methods that were purely and simply those of the mafia." Elsewhere in the French press, there has been fascination with the fate of Bin Ali and his family and concern at the prospects for democratic transition in Tunisia. Reports at the weekend, subsequently denied, indicated that the French government had turned down requests from Bin Ali for asylum in France, fearing protests from the country's Tunisian population and the prospect of Bin Ali's facing prosecution were he to attempt to stay in Europe. The French press reported at the weekend that members of Bin Ali's family, leaving Tunisia at the same time as the former president, were thought to be staying at the Disneyland resort outside Paris, later taking planes for Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Since then, there have been reports of the events that led up to Bin Ali's flight, with Le Monde writing in its edition on Tuesday that Bin Ali's wife had fled Tunisia on Friday with one-and-a-half tons of gold from the country's central bank on a flight for Dubai. According to reports in the paper, a poisonous atmosphere had reigned in regime circles in Tunisia in the lead up to the collapse, with Bin Ali apparently being told on the morning of 14 January that he no longer had the support of the army and arrangements then hurriedly being made for the president and his family to flee the country. A speech that Bin Ali had recorded to go out later in the day on the country's television, the last in a series that he had been giving since the protests started in December, was abandoned, and there was a "scorched-earth atmosphere" at the former president's villa in the resort town of Hammamet, where Bin Ali had taken refuge from the demonstrations in the capital Tunis. According to a report in Le Monde, Ali Seriati, the former head of the Tunisian presidential guard, himself arrested at the weekend as he tried to flee the country, told Bin Ali that "those bastards in the army have joined the population. Maybe we'll have to leave, but we'll burn Tunis first." Even before he seized power in 1987, Bin Ali had presented his regime as being a kind of "barrier" against any Islamist takeover in Tunisia, and writers in the French media have duly produced this bogeyman in discussion of prospects for the country's political transition. The country's acting president, former speaker of parliament Fouad Mebazaa, is a long-term member of the political bureau of the former ruling party, the Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique (RCD), as is Mohamed Al-Ghanoushi, the acting Tunisian prime minister and the man who announced Bin Ali's flight on Tunisian television last Friday. As has been widely pointed out, it seems unlikely that, having risked their lives to eject Bin Ali from power over the course of weeks of demonstrations, Tunisians will now be happy to see either of these men remain in power, especially in the light of Al-Ghanoushi's announcement on Monday of a provisional government mostly made up of politicians from the previous regime. Interviewed in the French press over the last few days, members of the Tunisian opposition, many of them living in exile in France, have demanded a genuine national-unity government that would give greater prominence to all the country's political forces, with a view to drafting a new constitution and the swift holding of elections. While the country's secularist opposition parties, eviscerated over the 23 years of the Bin Ali regime, remain weak and divided, the Islamist opposition, formerly the Mouvement de la tendance islamique, now the Ennahda Party, is said to have a wide following in Tunisia and a more far- reaching structure. Meanwhile, efforts have started to try to bring Bin Ali himself to justice. A group of French NGOs has filed a case with the French judiciary to freeze Bin Ali family assets in France, and similar efforts are being made in Switzerland. According to the French press on Tuesday, efforts are also being made to issue international arrest warrants for the former president, his wife and the former Tunisian minister of the interior Rafik Bel Hadji Kacem.
