Tunisians are now free and the media is no longer censored as it was under the dictatorial regime of Ben Ali. The media reports on corrupt business people and government authorities and on the misconduct of the presidential staff. The judiciary investigates corruption and human rights abuses. All of this was unimaginable before January 14, 2011.

Tunisians are now free and the media is no longer censored as it was under the dictatorial regime of Ben Ali. The media reports on corrupt business people and government authorities and on the misconduct of the presidential staff. The judiciary investigates corruption and human rights abuses. All of this was unimaginable before January 14, 2011.

A year and half after the revolution began, the government says it has achieved a lot: a new constitution that protects rights and freedoms, preparedness to carry out the first democratic legislative and presidential elections, revival of a semi-disabled economy, and assurance of security and stability.

Optimists confidentially refer to the Tunisian revolutionary course as the best case in comparison to the other Arab revolutions, and that the democratic transition in Tunisia is making headway. They believe that the bottlenecks and difficulties tacking place from time to time, such as some lawlessnesses and social tensions, should be understood and put in their natural context; the context of a country in the process of reconstruction.

Yet the setbacks witnessed by the revolutionary course in the last year and a half are more than mere circumstantial difficulties. The Islamic Ennahda Movement (IEM)-led government is committing serious errors that might undermine the revolution’s goals and threaten the establishment of a civil democratic state.

IEM victory in the Constituent Assembly elections of October 2011 and its formation of a government mainly controlled by the IEM, are fertile soil for the rise of extremist religious groups and the return of some elements that have been active within al-Qaeda in different parts of the world. 

Moreover, the funds coming from the oil countries in the Gulf have helped these groups be positioned within the state. The Salafist groups have mainly been stationed in poor neighbourhoods and cities where there are high rates of unemployment and poverty.

These groups have recently emerged as a threat to public and press freedom. In October 2011, a group of bearded persons, calling itself the “Salafist Current” attacked the director of the private Nessma TV Channel and tried to burn him after the channel had broadcast a French-Iranian animated cartoon (Persepolis), which that group considered to be offensive to the divine entity.

In mid-June 2012, the government had to shut down an art exhibition at Qasr Abdaliyeh in Tunis after Salafist protests of some drawings, which were considered offensive to Islam. Protests escalated to the extent that a state of emergency was declared in the country.

It didn’t stop there.  Through social networking services, extremists launched campaigns against the artists, journalists and politicians, accusing them of blasphemy and calling for their deaths. These threats targeted, in particular, women active in civil society and advocates of women’s issues.

What has contributed to the predominance of these groups, their disrespect for the law and their threatening of freedoms has been the government’s turning a blind eye and being lenient with them due to the upcoming elections, especially by IEM, which considers such a power as an important electoral stock.

This perhaps explains the government’s procrastination in activating an independent national body that would supervise the elections, and its seriousness in creating an alternative body affiliated to it to ensure its continuity in the power.

A year and a half after the revolution, corruption is still corroding the judiciary, which hasn’t got rid of the executive power’s intervention once and for all. The government continues its reluctance to create an independent body for the judiciary that would replace the Supreme Judicial Council created and presided by Ben Ali; thus, delaying the provision of guarantees for an independent judiciary, which forms a pillar of the democratic state.

Among the most important pillars are public media institutions and independent corrective agencies. Despite the unprecedented margin of freedom the Tunisian press currently enjoys, many journalists believe it might end at any time as long as this freedom is based on no legislative guarantees that protect journalists and ensure the independency of the media.

The current government has refused to activate two laws (Decree no. 115 on the freedom of printing, publishing and press, and Decree no. 116 on the freedom of audiovisual communication and creating a corrective body thereof).

Some events have deepened these concerns regarding media freedom when the Attounissia newspaper chief editor was imprisoned in January 2012 for publishing a photo of a half-naked woman on the first page. To justify this imprisonment, the judiciary relied on the Press Act from the Ben Ali regime, which should have been revoked by Decree no. 115. 

Last week, two young men were sentenced to seven years in prison for drawing a caricature deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad. This is happening in an environment experiencing a rising extremist religious tide and the spread of intimidation against anyone criticizing religious issues.

In the midst of this atmosphere, the government is seeking to benefit from all these events to distract public opinion with artificial issues irrelevant to the core of issues that sparked the revolution.

In the winter of 2010, thousands of young men rose up claiming to fight against bribery and corruption and demanded additional job opportunities in order to live in dignity. They raised slogans denouncing favouritism and nepotism and claimed to eliminate creative oppression and muzzling.  In addition, they ensured the freedom of opinion and expression, neither of which has materialized in the eyes of thousands of Tunisian youths.

The government, especially IEM, keeps reiterating that the country is moving forward slowly but steadily, to achieve these goals and create a civil democratic state. However, the risks of diversion into an authoritarian religious state, which is very real, make this movement risky or, like walking on the verge of the abyss.