A year after Tunisian fruit-seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire and triggered popular uprisings across the Arab world, popular expectations continue to run high, writes Mourad Teyeb in Tunis Who could have imagined one year ago that fewer than 12 months after 14 January 2011, the date of the country's revolution, Tunisia would not only be rid of former president Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali and his regime, but would also have a new president, new prime minister, new government and new parliament? Even more extraordinary has been the fact that the heads of these new institutions are all former dissidents, many of them having spent long years in jail or in exile under the former Bin Ali regime. What Tunisia has achieved has surprised even many optimists, one western analyst commenting that "what some countries manage in ten years has been done in less than one in Tunisia." Since Bin Ali's flight in January, the country has had three cabinets, two prime ministers, a successful set of elections leading to the formation of a new constituent assembly and the appointment of a new president. New laws have been passed that aim to break with the past and set the country on a new and democratic path. Many former regime officials and Bin Ali cronies have been put on trial, with the promise of further trials to come. Retired US diplomat William Jordan, a North Africa expert, gives Tunisia an upbeat assessment. "I think that overall the trend is positive," Jordan said. "Tunisia's new institutions are proving to be durable and responsive to Tunisians' desire for a more democratic, more open political system. They are a decisive break from the Bin Ali regime." The US NGO Human Rights Watch has also praised developments in Tunisia over the past year. "People are now free to go out and protest. New newspapers have been created. There's an atmosphere that's completely different from the state of fear that Bin Ali enforced," said Eric Goldstein, the organisation's deputy regional director. "Never in my life did I think I'd see this", said Lamia, a 45-year-old Tunisian woman talking of the new freedoms in the country. "I remember how we used to fear the secret police so much that we dared not discuss politics even at home." Nevertheless, for all its achievements the revolution in Tunisia was not painless, and it followed waves of strikes that took place amidst week-long curfews extending from Jbeniana on the east coast to Redeyef and Mdhila in the south-west and Kasserine in the north. Tunisians everywhere were impatient to reclaim rights usurped by the Bin Ali regime, with mainstream political parties failing to convince them that change was afoot in the country. Unemployed young people, many of them graduates, wanted jobs, and their demands fired up others, who began to believe that change was possible. Many people were fed up with the corruption and rent-seeking of the Bin Ali regime, convinced that the only way forward was revolutionary change and the overthrow of the former president. In the upheaval that followed, the country's tourism industry almost collapsed, and foreign investment shrank alarmingly. The NATO-led war in neighbouring Libya sent some million refugees across the border and brought thousands of Tunisians working in Libya back home. Illegal Tunisian immigrants to Europe were an additional headache for the Tunisian governments that followed the collapse of the Bin Ali regime. Strikes in the industrial centres of Gafsa and Gabes undermined the lucrative phosphates industry and caused the country to lose some $10 to 15 million a day. There was also the rise of Political Islam in the country and the ensuing debates about the role of religion in politics, with the victory of the Islamist Al-Nahda Party in October's elections to the constituent assembly taking few people by surprise. In a country that has a long tradition of secularism, Al-Nahda is viewed with suspicion by some. However, the party's leaders have been insisting that they want to share power and do not intend to push through radical measures since their victory in the elections. Not having an overall majority in the new assembly, Al-Nahda has been obliged to enter into coalition with centre-left parties. Ali Larayedh, an Al-Nahda leader, commented that "the economy, regional discrepancies and the war on corruption are the Party's biggest priorities." "We came to power thanks to democracy, not through military means. If some people want to accuse us of double-standards or of favouring the strict application of Sharia Law, it's their problem not ours," Larayedh told Al-Ahram Weekly. Larayedh, interior minister in the government led by Al-Nahda Secretary-General Hamadi Jebali, said that the Party intended to focus on economic and other reforms. According to Taher Yehia, a Tunisian human rights activist, it is the Salafis, rather than Al-Nahda, that are the real threat to Tunisia's democracy. Some weeks ago, hundreds of Salafi demonstrators calling for women to be allowed to wear the niqab, or complete veil, in class clashed with students at a university outside Tunis. "No one knows who these people are. They are taking advantage of the political situation in Tunisia," said Yehia. "Their appearance now as the country is starting out on a new democratic era is suspicious." "Many good and bad things that were repressed by the old regime have emerged since the revolution," said Tunisian journalist and political analyst Ammar Nemiri. "There is something of a power vacuum in Tunisia today, so it is not surprising that some extremists and opportunists have appeared." The achievements that Tunisia has seen since January's Revolution have been huge, but so have the expectations, outgoing prime minister Beji Caid Essebsi commenting that there could be "no Arab Spring without success in Tunisia." "To succeed, we need to overcome the country's economic problems, like the nearly 800,000 unemployed, of whom 250,000 are graduates," Essebsi said at a business and investment meeting in Tunis, underlining that in order to succeed the government must tackle the poverty and high unemployment that continue to preoccupy many citizens. Amid the celebrations, there have been disappointments for many. Abdel-Jalil, 28, a salesman working near Avenue Bourguiba in Tunis, said his future remained uncertain and he had seen "no real benefit from the revolution." "I have friends, unemployed like me, who hoped things would get better. But they are as bad as ever," Abdel-Jalil said. "The president should think about people's needs and give them work, as Mohamed would have wanted," Manubia, mother of Mohamed Bouazizi, told the world's press on 17 December when reporters descended on his home town of Sidi Bouzid. "However, I think that if my son were here, he would have been very satisfied. Through his action he opened the door to a new era for Tunisia and for the whole Arab world."
