Tunisian president flees chaos ; Longtime prime minister assumes power after crackdown in the capital

DAVID D KIRKPATRICK
International Herald Tribune
01-15-2011
Tunisian president flees chaos ; Longtime prime minister assumes power after crackdown in the capital
Byline: DAVID D KIRKPATRICK
Type: News

News of the departure of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali electrified an Arab world whose residents have increasingly complained of governments that seem incapable of meeting their demands.

President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali left Tunisia on Friday amid growing chaos in the streets, French diplomats said, and the prime minister went on television to say he was in charge.
A French Foreign Ministry official said the authorities did not know where the president had gone, and representatives of the president were not immediately available to confirm the report.

News of the departure of Mr. Ben Ali electrified an Arab world whose residents have increasingly complained of governments that seem incapable of meeting their citizens' demands and bereft of ideology save a motivation to perpetuate themselves in power.

"We hope that what happened in Tunisia could happen in other Arab countries where leaders and kings have rusted on their thrones," said Abeer Madi al-Halabi, a newscaster on New TV, a Lebanese station that supports leftist causes.

Mr. Ben Ali, who came to power 23 years ago and ruled through a police state, dismissed his cabinet in the afternoon and called for new legislative elections to be held in six months.

In his speech later on state television, the prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, a longtime ally of Mr. Ben Ali and in office for 11 years, said, "As the president of the republic is unable to exercise his functions for the time being, I have assumed, starting now, the powers of the president."

That announcement followed an extraordinary back-and-forth between the government and protesters. After the president tried to placate the protesters on Thursday with promises of more freedom, including a right to demonstrate, tens of thousands rushed into the streets of central Tunis on Friday to take advantage of his pledge by calling for his ouster.

But when the protesters led a funeral procession through the streets, the police finally moved to disperse the crowds, brutally beating demonstrators and raining tear gas on Boulevard Bourguiba.

The government announced the cabinet dismissal and offered early elections soon after the police moved in on the crowds, but news agencies said it also declared a state of emergency forbidding new demonstrations and warning that those who disobeyed would be shot. There were reports of gunfire in the center of the capital on Friday evening, The Associated Press reported.

The reports that the president had left surfaced soon after that, as did the televised address by the prime minister.

The anti-government protests began a month ago when Mohammed Bouazizi, a college-educated street vendor, committed suicide by setting fire to himself in protest of his dismal prospects amid Tunisia's poverty.

But the mounting protests quickly evolved from demands for more jobs to demands for political reforms, focusing mainly on the perceived corruption of the government and the self-enrichment of the ruling family. The protests were accelerated by Tunisia's large group of educated young people, who used social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter to call for demonstrations and to circulate videos of each successive clash.

Some demonstrators also cited the evidence of cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia that were released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks providing vividly detailed accounts of the first family's self-enrichment and opulent lifestyle.

Since their beginning, the protests have been closely followed by Arabic-language networks, as well as social Internet media like Facebook and Twitter. Hours after Mr. Ben Ali's reported departure, messages were posted to Facebook celebrating the fall of one of the Arab world's heaviest handed dictatorships.

"The most important thing is that we got rid of the dictator, Ben Ali, and his family. Thank God!" said one comment posted on a Facebook group called Tunisia.

Smaller protests, many of them over rising prices and economic conditions, have already taken place in countries like Egypt, Algeria and Jordan. Egypt, in particular, seems to bear at least a passing resemblance to Tunisia: a heavy-handed security state with diminishing popular support and growing demands from an educated, yet frustrated population.

"It's the creeping realization that more and more people are being marginalized and pauperized and, increasingly, life is more difficult," said Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, at the American University of Beirut. "You need little events that capture the spirit of the time. Tunisia best captures that in the Arab world."

The crowd that gathered in the streets on Friday morning on Avenue Bourguiba was celebrating its confidence that change was at hand. "Victory, victory, until the government falls," protesters chanted.

"Bouazizi you are a hero!" they shouted. "The people of Tunisia have won!"

Tunisia had not seen demonstrations like this since Mr. Ben Ali came to power in a bloodless coup. Tunisians have been accustomed to living under a police state that countered unauthorized public gatherings with arrests and possible torture. Dozens died over the past week as security forces -- including snipers, witnesses say -- fired on protesters.

Copyright International Herald Tribune Jan 15, 2011