First president of post-Ben Ali Tunisia (the dictator overthrown in 2011), Moncef Marzouki, 77, lives in exile in France. He was sentenced to four years in prison in December 2021 for having “undermined state security abroad” due to hostile remarks to the head of state, Kaïs Saïed. Faced with the unprecedented repression that has befallen the country since the revolution, he rebels against this president, a “junk Robespierre” who “declared war on the Tunisian people”. Interview.
L’Express: On April 18, the number 1 of the Islamo-conservative opposition party Ennahdha, Rached Ghannouchi, was arrested, like dozens of opponents before him. What do you think ?
Moncef Marzouki : We reached a milestone on April 18. We must listen to Kaïs Saïed’s speech on the same day, on the occasion of the 67th anniversary of the creation of the internal security forces. In front of an audience of police, he said he was waging “a war of national liberation”. Realize, he speaks of a “merciless war against any party trying to undermine the state, because they have no patriotism”! All this because a hundred opponents meet peacefully to refuse a return to dictatorship… We have never heard such a speech, even in the time of Ben Ali and Bourguiba.
I haven’t stopped saying it, as a doctor: Kaïs Saïed is a psychotic, locked in a delirium. We have a paranoid at the Carthage Palace. A man who calls for civil war, who recently instigated a black hunt against sub-Saharan migrants. Now it’s a hunt for all Ennahdha supporters, and a hunt for all opponents. It is extremely serious. We are no longer in politics, we have fallen into psychosis. Kaïs Saïed is a junk Robespierre! But his words are extremely serious.
We are witnessing a wave of counter-revolutions in countries which had overthrown dictatorial powers: Tunisia, Sudan… Two powers close to Egypt. Is the “al-Sissi model” spreading?
It is rather, in my opinion, the Chinese model that these countries would like to impose, under the influence of the Gulf States. In other words, economic development against the abandonment of all freedoms. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have the means to follow the Chinese model.
On the contrary, in our dictatorships in Tunisia and in Egypt, where the economy is sealed, the leaders are not able to give to their populations neither the economic rights nor the political rights. It is therefore a complete failure. But the games are not over. The Democrats lost a battle, not the war.
President Saïed has also just restored his diplomatic relations with Syria…
I broke off relations with Syria in 2012. At the time, all the fascists and Arab nationalists blamed me for it. And we are now reconnecting with this head of state… It must be understood that the Arab world is in turmoil in a war that does not say its name between, on the one hand, the supporters of the restoration, who have everything made to abort democratic revolutions but offer no satisfactory solution to the problems at the origin of these uprisings (poverty, corruption); and on the other, the Democrats. In the next 10-20 years, we will witness terrible clashes between these two tendencies.
For the moment, we do not see a political alternative emerging in Tunisia, nor a massive mobilization against President Saïed?
For now. In 2010, I was in political exile in Paris. At the time, everyone held the same speech: there is no alternative, the population does not move, etc. But we did not see that Tunisia was a volcano before the explosion. But the ingredients that blew up the volcano in 2011 are here again. For now, it’s the calm before the storm. I am not able to say when the eruption will occur again or the event that will trigger it, but sooner or later the population will be exhausted: people will run out of wheat, flour, water. They will eventually rise up because they will no longer have a choice. Will there be, at that time, political elites capable of supervising and directing? I believe so, as it happened in 2011.
You were the first post-Ben Ali head of state, but today part of the population holds you responsible for the failure of the revolution…
The failure of the revolution in Tunisia is due to internal and external factors. These should not be neglected. At the time, several Arab states, mainly the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and, in a way, Iran, vetoed the Arab democratic revolution. They did everything to break it. They did it in extreme violence in Syria, with the help of the Russians and the Iranians; in Yemen; and they organized the al-Sissi putsch in Egypt. In Tunisia, it’s the same thing: they managed to get me ousted in 2014 by investing in a slanderous campaign. Furthermore, between 2011 and 2014, we had to deal with terrorist attacks, many of which were ordered from outside.
However, we do bear some responsibility. For three years, the population experienced freedom but not economic development, because the machine was at a standstill. When you have a revolution, the economy is down. We went from 5 million to 1 million tourists. Then, the counter-revolution came in 2014 and it has ruled ever since. The Ennahdha party [avec lequel Moncef Marzouki a gouverné, NDLR] bears a great responsibility for the failure of the revolution, because they agreed to sponsor a corrupt man, Béji Caïd Essebsi, in the 2014 presidential election.
You know Kaïs Saïed, you met him several times when you were president. What inspired you at the time this character?
I have known the Tunisian political class well for 50 years. This man never lifted a finger for freedoms and human rights under the Ben Ali dictatorship. When I was president and we were preparing the Constitution, I met several constitutional experts, including him. I would be unable to tell you his recommendations, to believe that they really did not mark me. I had erased Kaïs Saïed from my memory… Until 2019, when he campaigned by presenting himself as a “clean gentleman”, anti-corruption and anti-system. This is how he won over voters. The population did not understand that if the Parliament did not please them, it was necessary to change the Parliament, by suppressing the democracy! Unfortunately, they threw the baby out with the bathwater.
The European Union yesterday expressed its “concern” after the arrest of Rached Ghannouchi, Paris deplored “a worrying wave of arrests”. Before that, Western chancelleries had said little about the authoritarian drift in Tunisia. For what ?
Over the past 50 years, Western democracies have always supported Arab dictatorships. First because they make the trade run by buying arms, then because the Europeans imagine that the strong regimes block illegal emigration. When the revolution broke out in 2011, I was naive enough to believe that Western democracies would support them. Nay! All because an Islamist party won the elections. However, there was an enormous misunderstanding on these victories of the Islamists: people did not vote Ennahdha because they wanted the return to Sharia but because they judged them not to be corrupt.
Westerners have not supported democratization. For example, I asked for help with the debt that plagued our country, but it didn’t really work. At the time, we were facing terrorist attacks. Who gave us weapons to fight them? Turks, not Americans! And when al-Sissi made his coup in Egypt, Westerners did not flinch.
Unfortunately, some continue to believe that Arab countries can only be led by “strong men”. This is a big mistake. In reality, these dictatorships only aggravate the economic and social crisis and force their populations into exile in Western countries, feeding the hate speech of the extreme right. By not promoting democracy in our countries, Westerners are endangering their own democracy.
Italy pleads for the IMF to grant an unconditional loan to Tunisia, on the verge of bankruptcy. Is this a dangerous idea in your opinion?
Yes, because the population will not benefit from this money, which will only be used to “hold” the civil servants without relaunching the economy. There is a rule that I have experienced in office: in times of major political instability, the economy does not restart. Italy thinks, wrongly, that by giving money to Kaïs Saïed, he will play the border guards.
Can Tunisia get out of the current authoritarian drift?
For this, I invite Tunisians to civil disobedience. We have to put an end to this regime. Kaïs Saïed betrayed the trust of Tunisians who voted for him on the basis of a contract, which he tore up. This man tried to build legitimacy by having a Constitution voted by referendum on July 25, 2022: the abstention was historic. Then he carved out a Parliament to his measure: 8.8% of Tunisians voted in the first round of legislative elections. It is time to denounce the illegitimacy of this president. The army, the police and the justice system should no longer obey him. Apart from the dismissal of this man and his judgment, Tunisia has no future.