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Vol. 82/No. 4 January 29, 2018
Anger at unemployment, regime fuels protests in Tunisia
BY TERRY EVANS
Extensive working-class discontent with rising prices, unemployment and
both major factions of the government led to protest actions over
several days in some 20 cities and towns across Tunisia beginning Jan. 7.
The government increased the price of fuel and some food items, raised
workers’ social security contributions and hiked taxes on phone cards,
internet usage and cars Jan. 1. For wide layers of the working class,
already fighting to make ends meet, the onerous measures impose even
greater difficulties.
Tunisia is touted in the bourgeois press as the one country to emerge
with a degree of “stability” from the Arab Spring uprisings that swept
parts of the Middle East and North Africa. But Tunisia has, in fact, had
nine governments since the 2011 mass uprising that overthrew the hated
Ben Ali dictatorship, and depression conditions continue to stalk
working people. While inflation currently runs at 6 percent, food prices
have gone up 50 percent since then.
Youth unemployment remains at 25 percent. And young people are a large
component of the rising proportion of workers — estimated at over
one-third of the workforce — employed in what is called the informal
economy, with no contract, no assurance of work, nor access to health
care or social security.
Toilers who live in the country’s less-populated interior face far fewer
jobs and the worst conditions.
“It is impossible for people to live with dignity today,” Wael Naouar, a
protester, told the New York Times Jan. 9.
“This government, like every government after Ben Ali, only gives
promises and has done nothing. People are angry and poverty is rising,”
Imen Mhamdi, a factory worker, told Al-Jazeera at a demonstration in
Sousse.
In response to the protests, Finance Minister Ridha Chalghoum extolled
“the achievements of democracy,” and “the ability to organize and
protest,” while defending the government’s attacks that pile more
hardships on the working class. At the same time, authorities unleashed
cops and tear gas on protesters and arrested over 700 people, including
three officials of the opposition Popular Front Party.
The government in November extended a state of emergency — in place
since Islamist terror attacks in 2015 — giving the cops the power to ban
strikes and prevent public protests. On Jan. 10 it deployed the army
against protesters in several cities, including Thala, a town of 16,000
in the northeast. Hours earlier cops had fled the town and demonstrators
torched the national security offices.
Acting in the interests of the wealthy bondholders, the International
Monetary Fund delayed payment of part of a promised $2.6 billion loan to
Tunisia last year, pressing the government to cut spending by firing
public sector workers.
Related articles:
Iran: Workers discontent is driven by war, economic crisis
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