Ben Ali also cracked down on the newspapers of secular opposition groups in 1990, not because any one of them was individually strong enough to challenge the regime, but because they showed signs of forming a broad alliance with Nahda. As Alexander (2010:
59) wrote of the secular parties: “Their poor showing in the April [1989] elections gave them little bargaining power in their own right. But they could play on Ben Ali’s fear of a united opposition front. By drawing closer to Ennahdha, they might force him to make concessions that they could not win on their own. ... Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait reinforced this opposition unity.” There was a precedent for this cooperation. Ali Laarayedh, a leader in the MTI, remarked that ties between the Islamist and secular opposition groups grew stronger in the 1980s (discussion with the author May 2016), an observation echoed by numerous interviewees.6 As Perkins (2016a: 168) notes, discussing the years just before
6The leftist Samir Taieb, MTI official Abdelhamid Jelassi, and Nahda member Saadok Sghiri confirmed the existence of cooperation between the Islamist and secular opposition during the 1980s (discussions with
Ben Ali came to power: “The specter of an alliance, however unlikely, between the MTI and one or another of the secular opposition parties alarmed the government.”
Admittedly, there were some signs of a secular-Islamist divide in early 1990. Reuters reported in April 1990: “Three Tunisian leftist parties announced on Wednesday a common manifesto which they hope will serve as the rallying point for a broad front against both the ruling party and the powerful Islamic movement. ... The Tunisian left in general is worried that the growth of the Islamic movement, now the second political force in the country, will leave them permanently on the sidelines.” The joint statement said: “Our plan is ... to build a democratic civilian state and to reject any plan for a religious state.” However, it also “called for the recognition of all political parties”, implicitly criticizing the government’s refusal to legalize Nahda (Wright 1990c). Later that year, the secular opposition took bolder steps to coordinate with Nahda. All six legal opposition groups and Nahda boycotted the local elections held in Tunisia on June 11 (Legum 1992a: B 520). After the government arrested hundreds of Nahda supporters and leaders in the fall of 1990, MDS leaders condemned this repression of the Islamists at their party congress. In January 1991, the six legal parties issued a joint declaration, calling for a real democracy that would include secularists and Islamists alike (Legum 1992a: B 520). In this context, with the secular opposition parties lending their support to Nahda’s challenge to the state, Ben Ali closed down their newspapers as well as Nahda’s.
However, over the course of 1991, as the government began successfully dismantling Nahda’s organization, the secular parties realigned with the regime and their newspapers were restored. Whereas Nahda and the secular opposition had, in the words of Ghannouchi, once acted in “coordination against our government,” Ben Ali convinced the secularists to join “a sort of common war, total war against Nahda” (discussion with the
the author, May 2016).
author, May 2016). Early in 1991, the “government and the lay opposition parties which they recognised” acted in “joint opposition to the Islamic movement” (Donnadieu 1992:
39). “Although the secular opposition was vocal in its denunciation of the most repressive government measures, it was significantly ‘bought off’ by a coincidence of interests with the ruling regime” (Murphy 1999: 201). In July of 1991 “ Ben Ali decorated [opposition] party leaders for their services to the state” (Middle East Economic Digest 1991c). The secular opposition papers began to reappear in November 1991.
The legal opposition parties ultimately resigned themselves to working within Ben Ali’s democratic fa¸cade. The head of the MDS in 1992, Mohamed Moadda, publicly praised Ben Ali’s policies and moved the MDS program closer to the RCD’s (Murphy 1999: 210; Perkins 2016a: 195).7 The Tunisian Communist Party abandoned Marxism for a moderate social democratic program, renaming itself the Renewal Movement (Harakat Ettajdid) (Murphy 1999: 211). For the remainder of Ben Ali’s time in power, most of the legal opposition parties offered little serious challenge to Ben Ali and the RCD. Two former members of the RCD central committee, Abir Moussi and Raouf Khamassi, both referred to these parties as the
“cartooneeya opposition,” literally the “cartoon opposition” (discussions with the author, May 2016).
3.7 Conclusion
The first half decade of Ben Ali’s dictatorship saw considerable variation in the government’s treatment of opposition media, both over time and across groups. This variation largely corresponded to patterns predicted by the model presented in the previous chapter. Ben Ali
7In 1995, Moadda began taking a more confrontational approach toward the RCD and found himself in jail within a few months (Murphy 1999: 215).
was more willing to allow the secular opposition to produce newspapers than the MTI/Nahda, because the secular groups were weaker than the Islamists, and thus unwilling to challenge his regime. Ben Ali briefly allowed Nahda to have a newspaper, but only after the country’s economic performance had considerably improved and Ben Ali had consolidated his own power over the government and the ruling party. When it appeared that Nahda might be stronger than he had thought, and the group began consistently taking to the streets, he took away their newspaper and drove the group underground. In the next chapter, I will test how well these patterns generalize to countries across the Arab region and over multiple decades.