INTERVIEW
"The Jasmine Revolution" was right of the one who led Tunisia for nearly a quarter of a century. Former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali died on Thursday at 83 years old. Since 2011, he lived in exile in Saudi Arabia, far from his country where he continued to be cited in many court cases.
>> At the microphone of Matthieu Belliard, in the morning of Europe 1, Mokhtar Trifi, president of the League of the humans right in Tunisia from 2000 to 2011, drew up on Friday the balance sheet of a reign marked by the corruption and repression.
"It was a president who, when he came to power in 1987, raised a lot of hopes, because the end of the Bourguiba regime (president from 1957 to 1987, ed) was really painful. was a democratic speech, renovation of the country, "recalls Mokhtar Trifi. "These hopes were disappointed after the rise of the Islamists in 1989. The regime began to tighten the screws, after which a relentless crackdown on Tunisia took place throughout Ben Ali's reign."
The economy in the hands of (very) close to the president
The president has set up an authoritarian regime, a veritable kleptocracy in which corruption, practiced on a very large scale, has allowed some intimates of Ben Ali to hold for decades the main economic levers of Tunisia. "Ben Ali and his second wife's family have cut the country down," said Mokhtar Trifi. "The whole economy was phagocyted by the Trabelsi clan, according to the World Bank, at least 25% of the Tunisian economy was in the hands of Ben Ali's in-laws, a regime of corruption, which looted the country."
For 23 years, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has retained power including violent repression of his political opponents. "Many people have gone through Ben Ali's courts and prisons, there is no single political enemy who has been abused," said Mokhtar Trifi.
>> READ ALSO - Tunisians face the death of Ben Ali: "I think he got what he deserved"
A political legacy reduced to nothing
Eight years after the dictator's departure, his political legacy seems to have been completely liquidated. Abir Moussi, candidate of the Free Destour Party, born of the Constitutional Democratic Rally of Ben Ali, finished in the 10th position of the first round of the presidential election on September 15, with only 4.02% of the vote.
However, the democratic transition is still not completed in Tunisia. The second round of the presidential election must see Kais Said and Nabil Karoui ... jailed since August 23 in the context of a case money laundering. "We can not imagine that a candidate is free to say and do what he wants, and that his competitor is prevented from doing so", deplores the former head of the League of Human Rights in Tunisia .