‘Moncef Marzouki’s Hidden Face’ is the title of a book appearing next September by Algerian journalist and political analyst Anwar Malek, an old friend of interim President Moncef Marzouki during his years in exile in France.

Malek says that his book will reveal that prior to the revolution his friend and political activist Moncef, once described Tunisians as cowards and those same people made Marzouki’s wildest dream of becoming president of Tunisia come true.

Mr. Malek, how do you describe your relationship with interim President Marzouki?

‘Moncef Marzouki’s Hidden Face’ is the title of a book appearing next September by Algerian journalist and political analyst Anwar Malek, an old friend of interim President Moncef Marzouki during his years in exile in France.

Malek says that his book will reveal that prior to the revolution his friend and political activist Moncef, once described Tunisians as cowards and those same people made Marzouki’s wildest dream of becoming president of Tunisia come true.

Mr. Malek, how do you describe your relationship with interim President Marzouki?

I met him during my years in exile in France, an exile which was compulsory for me but optional for him. I knew him closely and helped him through my media connections and I have countless proof of that. I nevertheless disagreed with him on many issues, such as his full readiness to ally with foreign countries to intervene militarily in Tunisia to remove Ben Ali, something I heard him saying on numerous occasions.

He used to bet on the outside rather than on his own people. True, he believed that the people should revolt against what he called internal occupation, but he never believed that this could happen and whenever I asked him why the Tunisian people were silent about the corruption of Ben Ali’s family and brothers in law he used to satirically say that the Tunisian people were hopeless and that to him they were mere cowards. (I do apologize from the Tunisian people for stating that word).

However, when the Tunisian people took to the streets, he began to utter slogans about rights and freedoms and began to present himself as the one behind that glorious revolution.

Why did you say: “Marzouki is my friend who is an affliction on the Tunisian revolution”?

Frankly, I was optimistic after the Tunisian elections in October 2011 because it is good for the country to have a human rights activist as its president and I wrote him and encouraged him and he replied gratefully. But as days passed, he never lived up to the things he used to say on TV.

Unfortunately, I reached the conclusion that Marzouki has become an affliction on the Tunisian revolution because he is not able to blend together his role as president and his previous role as a dissident who disagreed with everyone. He now agrees and disagrees with himself and with the allies who helped him come to power. It is obvious that he is politically schizophrenic and this will negatively affect all state institutions.

You are preparing to publish a book about Marzouki. What are its broad outlines?

I am currently writing a book entitled “Moncef Marzouki’s Hidden Face” in which I talk about my personal experience with him. I have conducted several field investigations on his life in France and Tunisia and gathered various and documented testimonies about him, which will be published for the first time.

I will also reveal in the book all the information I collected about Marzouki’s relationships with different countries, including Qatar and France, and I will reveal information about secret ties between him and Ben Ali’s circles.

I will also talk about his experience with women and of course I have chosen information that has political and intelligential dimensions and not personal details because I would never interfere in anyone’s private life. I have chosen what I believed necessary for the public to know.

I would like to assure everyone that there is no personal reason behind my choices, but as a writer, a journalist and an activist who happened to know someone who later became a president I could never deny the public the right to have access to important and useful information. I believe it will be useful to the Tunisian people in the future.

How would you judge Marzouki’s diplomatic performance, given that he shares foreign policy responsibilities with the foreign minister?

In my opinion, the diplomatic performance cannot be judged so soon but I can evaluate what I have seen. Personally, I believe that the Tunisian diplomacy is non-existent at the Arab level. Tunisia’s Arab relations have been shrunk into relations with Qatar only given the close relationship between Gannouchi and Qatar. At the European level, Tunisia’s relations revolve around France only because Marzouki lived in France and he has connections with certain circles there.

I believe that even his visits in the framework of the Arab Maghreb Union have been a failure because things are more complicated than just galvanizing slogans uttered by an overzealous president who lacks the capacity and the conviction to implement them. Moreover, Marzouki has not appointed high-profile Tunisian diplomats and it is irrational for a president to appoint someone with no experience whatsoever, even as a smell clerk, as his chef de bureau. This lack of experience has been evident in the many errors and slips of the tongue made by Marzouki, which surely embarrassed Tunisia diplomatically.

Some Tunisians accuse Algeria of secret involvement in causing chaos in Tunisia to prevent the revolution from being exported to Algeria. Is it a well-founded accusation?

I completely rule that out because Algeria has no interest doing so at all and on the contrary it is in Algeria’s best interest to have a stable Tunisia. I also believe that it is illogical to talk about exporting the revolution because Algeria went through a bloody civil war during the 1990s and it did not export it to Tunisia so how could things go the other way round today?

I believe that those who level such accusations against Algeria have an interest in diverting attention from the local players who want to shake Tunisia’s stability. Tunisia’s crisis is an internal one since some Tunisians want evil for their country and conspire against it. I however thank God because Tunisia has many qualified politicians and intellectuals who know the details better than I do.

As a political analyst, how do you evaluate the Arab revolutions, especially the Tunisian one?

I have reservations about the term “Arab Spring” because what is going on in my opinion is just an autumn for tyrants who have overpowered their people, stolen the fortunes of their countries and laid waste to them. A ‘spring’ should be the outcome of something, not a period in which countries stagger mindlessly.

My evaluation is that we are still at the beginning of a long road because tyrants are not just persons but intellectual, political, economic, party, security, institutional, associational, and unionist systems that cannot be eradicated quickly.

It is a horrible mistake to think that revolutionary goals are achieved once the ruler is dethroned. The Tunisian revolution is still in its early stages because the fall of Ben Ali does not mean that the regime is gone and Marzouki’s and Gannouchi’s coming to power does not mean that the revolution has triumphed. We should judge the Tunisian revolution by accomplishments on the ground and we can only say the revolution has triumphed when the reasons that drove Tunisians to the streets no longer exist.

When we see that the situation is still the same or even worse than before in terms of unemployment, poverty and lack of opportunities and when we see continuing political tension and tyrannical approaches and personalities that are still in power, this demonstrates that the Tunisian revolution is still battling rough seas and that the road ahead is long and daunting.