Tunisia, Fakhfakh government that charges the Covid-19 crisis to workers and to the popular masses will soon pay the consequences

The beginning of the so-called Covid-19 crisis in Tunisia coincided with the end of the institutional impasse to form the new government (after about 4 months of consultations). The internal contradictions of the Tunisian bureaucratic bourgeoisie gave birth to an even more heterogeneous government than the previous one, this is normal since the high fragmentation of the political composition following the last parliamentary elections. Today, the two-faced Janus represented by political Islam / authoritarian secularism, in power since 2015 but recently weakened by the result of the last elections, has also been implanted by the social democratic reformist left.

The political nature of the current Tunisian government

These two main trends previously had their own monolithic parliamentary representatives, but now they are fragmented: although Ennahdha is formally the only force of political Islam in government, but in the opposition there is a new entry that comes from the same furrow, the Karama party with which there is often unity of understanding between the two.

The same goes for secularist-conservative forces (often referred to as "secular" in western countries) which have undergone greater downsizing (Tahya Tounes, Nidaa Tounes, The Tunisian Alternative and Machrou Tounes together count 24 deputies), the nostalgic of the former dictator Ben Ali of the PDL count less than 20 deputies, finally the parties of the reformist left and the Nasserian "nationalists" are represented by the Democratic Current and the Movement of the People (together in the Democratic Bloc parliamentary group become the second parliamentary group after Ennahdha).

The internal contradictions of the Tunisian bourgeoisie expressed by these parties and the mediation represented by President of the Republic Kais Saied’s action, has shuffled the cards within these 3 major political trends of the country.

Kais Saied, in fact, despite being a president not belonging to any parties, after Ennahdha's first failed attempt to form the government (which he was entitled to), he acted skillfully following his own principles hostile to the old regime representatives and exploiting his institutional prerogatives.

He therefore denied the possibility of trying to form the government to the second party in parliament, Qalb Tounes (creature of the telecommunications mafia magnate Nabil Karoui) and instead entrusted the task to the current Prime Minister Elyes Fakhfakh, exponent of the social democratic and extra-parliamentary party Ettakatol (Democratic Forum for Work and Freedoms) placing it as the needle of the balance of these internal contradictions and giving life to the "Fakhfakh creature".

A government of national unity with the majority of ministerial portfolios assigned to "technicians" and the rest entrusted in order to representatives of Ennahdha, People's Movement, Democratic Current, Tahya Tounes, Nidaa Tounes and Tunisian Alternative. A government supported by almost the entire parliamentary arch except for three parties (Karama, Qalb Tounes and PDL).

A government with an anti-national nature that continues to represent the interests of the Tunisian bureaucratic and comprador bourgeoisie in its various factions linked to Western imperialism (France, Italy, USA) and open to reactionary powers in the Middle East (the Turkey / Qatar axis, but also United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia).

It is this government that since the first day of its establishment in late February has measured itself with the pandemic confirming once again like the previous governments to following the trend of foreign debt (and therefore of foreign dependence) by accepting loans from Italy, so-called aid from the EU (€ 850 million), the US ($ 600 thousand), as well as from China, a new loan from the IMF (€ 545.2 million), the Islamic Development Bank ($ 279 million), the African Development Bank. In particular, this new IMF loan has the same constraints as the previous ones which impose a deregulation of the national economy with liberalizations, cuts in public spending, weakening the welfare state already at the limit in a country like Tunisia.

So no illusions about this government, who, among the intellectuals and activists of the reformist left, thinks that "the Fakhfakh government cannot afford to make mistakes" and expresses itself in these terms, reveals its ideological-political confusion.

Who is paying for the crisis in Tunisia?

Tunisia has a public debt that exceeds 75% of its GDP, this is a direct consequence of the foreign debt
vicious circle that increasingly ties the country to a neo-colonial condition since 1956 (the year of formal independence). The official average unemployment rate is 15% with peaks of 35% among young people (representing a good portion of the population) and the poverty rate is 30%.

In addition, more than 50% of GDP is made up of the underground economy which allows hundreds of thousands of officially unemployed people to survive.

This economic dependence on imperialism pursued by the rulers is the cause of this economic / social framework which is worsening more and more with the daily attack on the already precarious living conditions of the popular masses. This context worsened with the outbreak of the Covid-19 crisis in March.

This was clear from the economic policy measures launched ad hoc in the two months of March-April:

from the 2,500 million Tunisian dinars (€ 800 million), allocated by the government, only 450 million td are destined for workers and the poor while all the rest is for the benefit of the masters who are granted subsidies, tax relief and bank and financial facilities. In addition, the tens and tens of thousands of workers who work illegally will not benefit from these incentives and many of them have already been put at the door by the companies they work for which closure was imposed following the latest decree against the pandemic. But two measures in favor of companies deserve further investigation:

The suspension of the procedures for "tax crimes": another great gift that the post-revolt Tunisian regime makes to the great businessmen colluded with the former Ben Ali regime, recently rehabilitated with a sort of "national reconciliation" promoted by the late president Essebsi and severely challenged by a movement that arose for this occasion Manich Msemah (I do not forgive).

A further gift is instead addressed to totally exporting companies, often foreign ones, who already enjoying enormous benefits (non-payment of taxes for the first 10 years, contributions of up to 50% from the government on workers' wages, possibility of importing machinery without paying customs, possibility to export 100% of the profits etc.) will find themselves in a highly competitive position with respect to the national producers producing the same goods.

There were also speculators, immediately active in defrauding the prices of basic necessities (flour, semolina, garlic, eggs and milk) that the government said it wanted to counter, to which were added episodes of institutional corruption that have invested in full government itself ...

the most striking case concerns the minister of industry Ben Youssef who, overcoming the law, ordered a command of thousands of masks on behalf of the government from a parliamentary and industrial deputy. During his press conference on April 19, Prime Minister Fakhfkh minimized the incident by taking the defense of the minister.

It must be added that at the end of April the government proceeded with measures aimed at targeting public sector workers (who represent a large part of the official work evidently) by attacking their purchasing power by taking forced withdrawals from wages to support the crisis, announcing the non-payment of overtime job already done and so on.

On April 28, Faycel Derbel, a former economic adviser to the government, suggested to "lightening the mass salary of the civil service", specifying that this does not mean "reducing civil service ‘salary", but evidently means new firings, perfectly in line with what preaches for some years the IMF to the leaders of the country.

The ruling political class and its lackeys are therefore using Covid-19 to return to the main road of the structural reform program which had been hampered last year by two large general public strikes (with participations of over 90%) who claimed the opposite: job protection and the economic rights of the "wage bill". This had created quite a few frictions between the previous government and the IMF, given that the former had been forced by the strike to renegotiate some conditions with the imperialist financial agency such as the granting of career shots and wage increases.

What is the response of the Tunisian popular masses?

In the face of this crisis management, a heterogeneous and jeopardize spontaneous resistance is underway: more radical protests have occurred in the rebel region of Kasserine, with spontaneous proletarian expropriations from the trucks of flour and semolina which also occurred in Meknassi (region of Sidi Bouzid) to which were added demonstrations in front of the buildings of power to demand the restoration of the supply of these basic necessities. In Kasserine, a member of parliament from the region and owner of a mill and warehouses who has been speculating on these assets for years has been charged.

Instead, in the capital proletarian suburbs (Mnhilla and Ettadhamen) hundreds of people, after not finding the subsidies from the government, not finding them at the bank counters, made roadblocks clashing with the police. As of this writing, a month later, other roadblocks are underway in the Susa region for the same reason, as the second tranche of the subsidy has not yet been paid. Similar demonstrations also occurred in the agricultural region of Siliana.

In Djerba island the situation has been tense for at least 15 days, in fact after being declared an outbreak area, access to the island was closed (ferries stopped and the ancient Roman bridge closed) about 3,000 workers from other regions found stuck there, jobless with the closure of all activities. After weeks of promises, the government finally began the gradual evacuation to quarantine sites and then allowed everyone to return home, but this only happened after clashes with the police occurred several times when the exasperated people tried to break through the safety cords and to cross the Roman bridge to reach the mainland.

A similar situation has affected hundreds of Tunisians who have been stranded on the border in Libya. After days of exhausting waiting, with the complacency of the Libyan border authority (Berber militias loyal to Serraji who have other concerns with the arrival by the Haftar militias at only 15 Km ...), they broke through the border returning to their country without finding resistance not even from the Tunisian border authorities.

The doctors and nurses, brought up more and more instrumentally by the rulers of all the countries, in mid-March at the hospital in Sfax harshly contested the visiting health minister. A minister widely criticized by many for his evident incompetence in managing the health crisis and accused of being engaged mainly in propaganda tours.

The students and university professors’ unions instead boycotted the proposal of the ministry of higher education for distance teaching that would discriminate most of the students, given the conditions of the country, and denounced how such a proposal is the fig leaf to favor private telephone companies or foreign manufacturers such as Huawei.

Despite the growing unpopularity of the mentioned ministers, Fakhfakh has pursued the survival of his government as his first objective, not wanting to disturb the fragile internal balance, in this sense he has given in to the advances of Ennahdha that, after a low profile debut in the government, being the majority party, now is asking more: in the midst of many controversies Fakhfakh appointed two further political advisors a few days ago for the presidency of the Council of Ministers coming from the Islamist party.

Continuing to follow the Italian government crise timing agenda, also Tunisia, yielding to pressure from the UTICA patronal organization, will disorderly reopen many activities regardless of the negative health effects in contrast to the opinion of doctors and virologists.

In this context, the parliamentary opposition, excluding the reactionaries, is practically non-existent. The parties of the revisionist left, Popular Front and Workers' Party, outside parliament are practically inactive, leaving their militant base, composed mainly of young people, without political indications and in disarray (or better to say "leaving them at home").

Currently the single union UGTT is the only structured social force that can potentially act as a barrier against these policies, however, considering that for decades it has been an internal force in the power paradigm with a strategic aim tending more to conciliation than to breaking with power itself, this it was clear during the great miners' revolt of Gafsa in 2008 and in the same popular uprising of 2010/2011. In the current phase, it has limited itself only to formal stances respecting the ban on strike (among other things formally in force since 2015 with the establishment of the "state of emergency" recently extended until June).

However, a part of the revolutionary forces has found an organizational form, also managing to involve a part of the basic militants of the revisionist parties, creating a sort of frontal organization called the Popular Solidarity Initiative Network. This organization has started a national campaign in which at the same time it materially supports the popular sectors most affected by the crisis, informs about health conditions and denounces government policies. The "left" of this organization, composed of Maoist communists active in the network, consider it as a United Front activity suited to the concrete situation and objectively direct its activity, other comrades from the same area instead do not participate and criticize it considering this experience as a form of "charitable bourgeois propaganda".

What is certain is the need to fully grasp the challenge launched by the counterpart and intensify the struggle for the construction of the Communist Party suited to current conditions and the country in the service of the class struggle that is currently developing and for the Revolution of New Democracy