Lubna Jribi, a Politburo member and a member of the National Constituent Assembly for the leftist liberal Ettakatol party believes that the disintegrating national dialogue has clearly revealed the last remaining defects long unknown about the troika. Jibri says the ruling coalition has become an arm-twisting game between the partners in power. Ettakatol considers itself the godfather of the dialogue and claims that Ennahda has deliberately tried to discipline and punish Ettakatol.

Lubna Jribi, a Politburo member and a member of the National Constituent Assembly for the leftist liberal Ettakatol party believes that the disintegrating national dialogue has clearly revealed the last remaining defects long unknown about the troika. Jibri says the ruling coalition has become an arm-twisting game between the partners in power. Ettakatol considers itself the godfather of the dialogue and claims that Ennahda has deliberately tried to discipline and punish Ettakatol.

Lubna Jribi, after the revisions of the rules of procedure, which were ratified by Ennahda and the Congress, and which made Mustapha Ben Jaafar lose his powers, is it possible to say that Ennahda wanted to weaken the Ettakatol?

We believe that these revisions came within the framework of the philosophy which aims at punishing all those who were behind the suspension of the council’s work after the assassination of MP Mohamed Brahmi.

We also suspended Ettakatol’s work although we do not believe in the vacant seats policy. This position shocked the Ennahda Movement and its president told the council that what happened was a misunderstanding.

As long as this position is not abandoned, we will not return.  We support dialogue and we will not stop the consultations. We wanted the opposition MPs to be present in order to stop the passing of this revision. The Ennahda Movement committed a political mistake which brought us back to a situation of divisions and dissent, despite all the efforts that we made since the assassination of Brahmi.

We were confronting two conflicting groups and thus we took a step to suspend the work of the council in order to calm things down.  We then asked the General Union of Tunisian Workers to sponsor the dialogue. We demanded the formation of a non-partisan government but we were punished because of our demand.  The Ennahda Movement committed a mistake which has hampered the national dialogue and hindered its progress.

Doesn’t this behavior contradict your declared intentions to support progress in the national dialogue?

This is unfortunate. We, as far as we can, understand the negative stances of MPs who are not engaged in the national dialogue, but we cannot accept the stances of the parties who publicly support the open national dialogue and call for unity and for overcoming the crisis, such as the Ennahda Movement. On the other hand, MPs fall into the trap of provocation and ratify the revision of the rules of procedure. This confirms the discrepancy in the principles.

Supposedly, the troika’s higher coordination committee is the incubator of your differences. Is it right if we say that this coordination committee is no longer able to accommodate your differences?

The differences showed that coordination is not coherent and there is no consultation philosophy, even if not coherent or effective. We are the party in power, but we often denounce differences, because we have exhausted consultation and participatory methods.

Logically, it is not accepted that a party participating in the government condemns the actions of its partners but there are fundamental differences between us, there is also an absence of coordination and consultation, especially as we are a party that has nothing in common with the Ennahda Movement when it comes to the social project and the economic vision.

We fought many battles with Ennahda and we were in a leading position on many issues relating to the Constitution, including: the civilian nature of the state, the universality of human rights, our resistance to violence and our call to neutralize mosques and for reviewing appointments.

Ettakatol has previously said that it joined the government coalition together with Ennahda because it wanted to prevent it from monopolizing power.  Did you fail in this mission?

Whenever the political office convenes, we assess the situation and we focus on the violations of ministers and we warn them.  We were able to stop the country from facing many crises and we have tried to confront attempts to monopolize power but government solidarity prevents us from talking about these things.

We did not allow the approval of a budget which was prepared to compensate political prisoners, not because we have objections on the principle itself, but because the economic situation does not allow it.  We do not want to appear as heroes because we are going through a very delicate phase.

The Tunisians do not know what is going on behind the coalition scenes. They believe that Ettakatol is a partner in all the mistakes committed by the troika. It would have been much better to be frank with the Tunisian people about the reality of the situation and the balance of power in the coalition.

Tunisians can differentiate between good and bad. Those who are always present in the media are not always the most credible. Our presence is limited because we want to calm things down and we do not resort to useless criticism.

We were among those calling for the dissolution of the League for the Protection of the Revolution and we were against some of the draft laws submitted by the government to the legislative committees. Between Jabali and Larayadh the governments, we have witnessed a change in the consultation policy. This is clear in our participation in the selection of the government members and the creation of a committee to review appointments.

We were able to abide by our principles. It is regrettable that we did not receive the support of most of the opposition parties. If we did, we would have been able to put more pressure but we did not have enough support within the government coalition. 

Did Ennahda try to deprive you of your specificity as it did with the Congress Party for the Republic? Is it possible that it may replace you by the people’s sovereignty bloc in the coming period considering the repeated conflicts between you and Ennahda?

We are in a government coalition and not in an alliance that has a limit of building a joint program. It means participating with parties we disagree with in terms of programs and in terms of the societal project but the phase requires that these parties participate in the government.

The Nida Tounes Party, for example, says that the phase requires an alliance with several parties and it suggested the alliance with the Ennahda Movement. For us there were no options. There were the necessities of the constituent phase.

Our party has witnessed divisions similar to other parties but we were able to maintain harmony within the party. Regarding the people’s sovereignty bloc, it is a parliamentary coalition which will take part in the constituent work. We were not always in harmony with the Ennahda Movement bloc in the constituent and parliamentary work.

Were the stances of the Congress for the Republic, the major player of the troika, loyal and submissive to the Ennahda Movement?

We do not want to assess the experience of the Congress. We only hoped that the Congress for the Republic had given us a push in our struggle with the Ennahda Movement, the key player in the troika’s higher coordination committee.

Upon the implementation of the road map, especially the section on the constituent work, the Ettakatol was able to play an important role in this phase, but today it is weakened by the Ennahda Movement’s attempts to “discipline” it.  How could the Ettakatol regain this role?

We were the pioneers in stances and in confronting attempts to thwart the map, and this has given us an essential role, more important than that of the opposition. We are obsessed with the success of the track, which is essentially linked to the national dialogue track and this is what leads our work in Ettakatol. We have only suspended our work to put pressure on other parties to return to dialogue.

On the first occasion of the national dialogue, we suggested Ahmed Mestiri to head the government. He is the person who confronted Bourguiba when he monopolized power and he did the same with Ben Ali.  He is one of the founders of the multi-party elections and the initiator of the Personal Status Code.

We have decided that he is the right person, but because there was no consensus on his name, we suggested other names according to clear criteria: the person should be a statesman, accepted by all, has a strong personality, unites Tunisians and has sufficient experience to manage the government.

How do you evaluate the intervention of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which gave Tunisia an emergency loan package with the acceptance of Tunisia’s Finance Minister, who is a member of Ettakatol and represents it in the national dialogue negotiations?

The IMF should play its role as an economic guarantor and should not go beyond this role. Tunisia is a sovereign state and we do not accept IMF interference in matters of sovereign authority and in decision-making.

I think that our choices in the coming six months are political choices par excellence and not economic because we need to achieve political stability. We must maintain our independence. All politicians agreed that political stability should be achieved and that this will have its impact on the security, social and economic fields.

Did the IMF recommendations make Ettakatol forget its social ideology as a social-democratic party?

We have approved many social measures that are not linked with the IMF reforms such as tax exemptions for employees earning less than 5000 dinars (US $2,900) a year. On the other hand, we imposed a tax of 1% on employees who earn salaries of 20,000 dinars (US $11,000) per year.  This represents 9% of Tunisians.  These measures were approved to support the vulnerable groups and thus we remained faithful to our ideology. Rumors that have circulated about us are mere fallacies.

But what about measures that endanger the middle class, especially the increase in prices and the government intensions to lift subsidies on basic goods?

We believe that subsidies should go to those who deserve them. We should achieve solidarity with the lower classes and thus all the taxes which we have imposed will benefit the middle class.

The fuel tax on off road cars will be more beneficial to those who do not have cars. Everybody is calling for reforms, and when we started with these reforms we were confronted with a relentless campaign. I think that there is a lobby with economic interests and its aim is to distort these procedures and distort the image of the finance minister.

Moreover, the assessments made by some experts about the Tunisian economy are superficial and they did not understand the depth of reforms. We are participating in a coalition with a liberal party that has a liberal economic vision but we are trying to introduce some social reforms.