This weekend’s election in Tunisia will be predictably for a region where “ageing autocrats use elections for the sole purpose of keeping themselves in power and their family in riches,” one observer writes:
Compared to the violent oppression of it’s neighbors, Algeria and Libya as well as Egypt, Tunisian political control is more discrete and more legalistic. But a closed political system it is….Just as in the neighboring countries genuine opposition can be quickly countered by laws against defamation of the state or insult to the president or nation. The government controls the airwaves, the administrators control the system.
Abidine Ben Ali’s regime not only bans Islamist parties, but also suppresses moderate voices.
The regime and its neighbors also typify a common trait of Arab authoritarianism: efforts by ageing leaders to engineer their succession, preferably by keeping it in the family. But the recently-launched campaign to stop Gamal Mubarak’s inheriting his father’s presidency suggests that people’s tolerance for political dynasties is wearing thin.
As the recent Arab Human Development Report notes, “the public has become restive in the grip of authority fashioned in a bygone age, and the state’s hold on power grows more fragile each year.”
[...] more legalistic. But a closed political system it is.” Therefore, Michael Allen summarizes Tunisian politics as “gerontocracy vs. [...]