Tunisia, a country ‘lobotomised’?

It was Monica Marks, Tunisia-watcher and Assistant Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies at NYU Abu Dhabi, who used the word “lobotomised” in connection with the October 6 election in Tunisia, where President Kais Saied sought to stay on in his job. Late on October 6, after the ballots were cast and the winner predicted, Professor Marks went on the BBC to discuss the election and what it meant.

Is Tunisia a country lobotomised?

What is there to say about that election?

Two things, straight off: It was not a triumph for democracy. And it’s emphatically not a triumph for Tunisia.

It was in Tunisia that the people in north Africa and parts of the Arab world first called time on autocrats. Tunisia overthrew Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, a brave act that triggered uprisings across the region, from Egypt to Libya, Syria, Yemen.

Those events were collectively dubbed the “Arab Spring”, a label rejected by the Arab world but still routinely used by Western media.

And it was springtime of a sort. There were months and years when hope budded and bloomed, even throwing up new shoots. What it didn’t do was put down strong roots. And the soil was poor, unenriched by good policies that widen and deepen economic opportunity and invest in human hope and the potential for change.

It felt moderately spring-like even five years ago, when Mr Saied emerged on the national scene. Even that moment was democratic for Tunisia, with Mr Saied triumphing over two dozen opponents in a real election.

How things change. This time, everything was different. The president, a former professor of constitutional law, faced just two token challengers. The election was held against the dispiriting backdrop of mass opposition arrests and a cowed media.

It’s been three years since Mr Saied assumed sweeping powers, shuttering parliament and hobbling the judiciary, and it shows. Spring is long in the past. It’s winter in Tunisia.

This election puts a final seal — at least for the moment — on any hope that Tunisia will complete the journey from overthrowing an autocrat to making it politically impossible for another to take his place.

The saddest thing of all: there’s not even a whiff of Tunisia’s once-fragrant jasmine revolution.

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com