2019 presidential elections in Tunisia
The lines below are from Reuters (21 August 2019) and what is between brackets is mine.
The struggling economy is at the top of many voters' priorities and Ennahda [the Islamist Party usually dubbed "moderate" in the Western mainstream media which defines what "democracy" is and where it exists and doesn't exist] and other secularists [whatever that means] support market-oriented reforms urged on Tunisia by the International Monetary Fund [in order to industrialise the country and make it propserous and competitive with South Korea, Italy and Taiwan] but strongly resisted by unions and the population [who think they know their interests better than the IMF and World Bank men and women do].
And [Nabil] Karoui [a media tycoon, "Tunisian's Berlusconi"], backed by his Nesma TV station, has positioned himself as champion of the poor in the neglected hinterland outside the capital -- Ennahda's strongholds.
[The two short paragraphs above appear at the very end of [an edited] Reuters piece. They are the only lines hinting to the socio-economic situation in Tunisia, which is today, after 8 years of "democracy" worse than before the 2011 uprising. Not a word about the economic programme of highlighted candidate in the article, Morou, only that bit that says his party supports "market-oriented reforms". But we know that he is a lawyer, speaks fluent German and likes Beethoven!].
Update: 24 August
Karoui, the media tycoon and presidential candidate, has been arrested in charges of tax evasion. The move has been described by trade unionist Hamdi Bechir Hamdi as "a gang of mafiosos battling each others and sorting their accounts out; it is a battle to redistribute the reigns of power among each other. They are those people who inherited Ben Ali's machine. The talk about democracy, elections and the rule of law is a theater... After all, there are people who are more corrupt than Karoui."
The lines below are from Reuters (21 August 2019) and what is between brackets is mine.
The struggling economy is at the top of many voters' priorities and Ennahda [the Islamist Party usually dubbed "moderate" in the Western mainstream media which defines what "democracy" is and where it exists and doesn't exist] and other secularists [whatever that means] support market-oriented reforms urged on Tunisia by the International Monetary Fund [in order to industrialise the country and make it propserous and competitive with South Korea, Italy and Taiwan] but strongly resisted by unions and the population [who think they know their interests better than the IMF and World Bank men and women do].
And [Nabil] Karoui [a media tycoon, "Tunisian's Berlusconi"], backed by his Nesma TV station, has positioned himself as champion of the poor in the neglected hinterland outside the capital -- Ennahda's strongholds.
[The two short paragraphs above appear at the very end of [an edited] Reuters piece. They are the only lines hinting to the socio-economic situation in Tunisia, which is today, after 8 years of "democracy" worse than before the 2011 uprising. Not a word about the economic programme of highlighted candidate in the article, Morou, only that bit that says his party supports "market-oriented reforms". But we know that he is a lawyer, speaks fluent German and likes Beethoven!].
Update: 24 August
Karoui, the media tycoon and presidential candidate, has been arrested in charges of tax evasion. The move has been described by trade unionist Hamdi Bechir Hamdi as "a gang of mafiosos battling each others and sorting their accounts out; it is a battle to redistribute the reigns of power among each other. They are those people who inherited Ben Ali's machine. The talk about democracy, elections and the rule of law is a theater... After all, there are people who are more corrupt than Karoui."
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