Africa

Home page

Africa

Insight: Tunisia stumbles to democracy in a troubled neighborhood

25 November 2013 00:44 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Tunisia offers perhaps the last hope for Arab Spring democracy; only in the small nation that inspired revolts from Cairo to Tripoli has the negotiating table won out over the gun, so far, APA reports quoting Reuters.

After months of crisis, Islamists and their secular opponents are bargaining over forming a caretaker government, a new constitution is a few penstrokes from completion and a second free election is around the corner.

Tunisia's stumbling way towards democracy is far from secure. A fragile political balance could yet be upset by infighting, economic malaise or the threat of violent militants determined to stamp their fundamentalist view onto the Arab World's most secular nation.

Still, Tunisia stands out in a troubled neighborhood where not much has gone right in the three years since Arab peoples began rising up against their autocratic leaders.

"We had five revolutions in the region and the others faced so many obstacles. Tunisia's is the last hope," Islamist party chief Rached Ghannouchi told Reuters. "We have conflict here, but we fight with words, with courts and laws, not bullets."

Elsewhere in North Africa, the military has removed Egypt's first freely-elected president and Libya is a mess of militia anarchy. Further afield, more than 100,000 people have died in Syria's civil war while Yemen is gripped by al Qaeda attacks and sectarian violence as it pursues reconciliation talks.

Tunisia's delicate consensus relies on two men: Ghannouchi, whose ruling Islamist party Ennahda is resigning as part of the effort to end the political crisis, and Beji Caid Essebsi, a former parliamentary speaker in the autocratic regime that once forced Ghannouchi into exile.

Egypt, where Islamist president Mohamed Mursi has gone on trial and hundreds have died in violence since his removal in July, has offered a sobering lesson.

"Tunisian leaders on both sides realize that violence benefits no one. They don't want to go down the path of Egypt," said one Western diplomat.