Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

Transitional Justice and National Reconciliation
Anna Wilson
Defining the Enemy
What is perhaps most remarkable about Tunisia’s revolution is the way in which the guilt
has been focused down onto so few individuals: both the guilt for the suffering of the
population under the former regime, and the blame for the current social and economic
situation—in essence onto the person of the former President himself, Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali, his wife and her extended family. This is remarkable in that, while Tunisia’s
post-decolonialization history is one dominated openly by only two men, and a single
(albeit renamed) party that funneled money and power in the country very tightly into the
hands of very few, five decades of single-party rule has meant that it is difficult to see the
limits of individuals’ interactions with the regime.
Moreover, while there have been many expulsions from public office, particularly
in the Ministry of the Interior, there could have been many more. Instead, Tunisians
seemed content to wait patiently through a period of technocratic rule—essentially that of
the same bureaucrats who had been running the country under the old regime—provided
the clear term limits were adhered to and the President himself bowed to demands that he
“dégage” (French for “clear out”). The question now, however, over a year after the
revolution and with Tunisia governed for the first time by electoral will, is where the
population and the political elites will draw the line between who should be punished and
who was just doing their job, how to find the line for the bare minimum demanded for a
sense of justice having been served.
There are a number of areas where these questions raise pressure points on
Tunisia’s post-revolutionary society. First, the question of what to do about the former
members of the ruling party, the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD),
currently an illegal party, but whose members still make up the officials elected at
municipal levels, since new elections have not yet been held. Second, there is the
concern that members of Ennahdha are preoccupied with gaining political revenge for the
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