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Coffeeshop Chit Chat - Ben Ali ousted despite election win..SG?</TD><TD id=msgunetc noWrap align=right> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE class=msgtable cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="96%"><TBODY><TR><TD class=msg vAlign=top><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR class=msghead><TD class=msgbfr1 width="1%"> </TD><TD><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0><TBODY><TR class=msghead vAlign=top><TD class=msgF width="1%" noWrap align=right>From: </TD><TD class=msgFname width="68%" noWrap>kojakbt89 <NOBR></NOBR> </TD><TD class=msgDate width="30%" noWrap align=right>Feb-3 6:02 pm </TD></TR><TR class=msghead><TD class=msgT height=20 width="1%" noWrap align=right>To: </TD><TD class=msgTname width="68%" noWrap>ALL <NOBR></NOBR></TD><TD class=msgNum noWrap align=right> (1 of 9) </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD class=msgleft rowSpan=4 width="1%"> </TD><TD class=wintiny noWrap align=right>44162.1 </TD></TR><TR><TD height=8></TD></TR><TR><TD class=msgtxt>Tunisia: President won landslide victory in election but ousted 15 months later
February 4th, 2011 |
Author: Contributions |
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Tunisia President Ben Ali’s resignation on 15 Jan 2011 was most puzzling in view of the fact that he had won a major landslide victory in the election 2009 fifteen months earlier.
On 25 Oct 2009, Tunisia held its presidential and parliamentary elections. The Interior Ministry released the official election results the next day showing that the incumbent President Ben Ali had won 89.6% of the votes. His nearest rival could only manage 5%. This was the fifth consecutive win for the president since he took power 23 years ago. Voter turnout was recorded at 89.4% with 4,447,388 of Tunisia’s 5.3 million registered voters participating.
In the parliamentary election, the president’s ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), had also scored a major landslide victory by winning 84.6% of the votes, snatching majority of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The RCD won 161 out of 214 available seats (i.e., 75.2%). RCD has governed continuously since Tunisia’s independence from France in 1956.
Fifteen months later, in a popular uprising now being named, The Tunisian Revolution or The Jasmine Revolution, President Ben Ali has bowed out and fled Tunisia unceremoniously.
The riots and demonstrations that have swept through Tunisia began with a small incident in mid-December. Twenty-six-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, living in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, was a graduate but with no job. To earn some money he took to selling fruit and vegetables on the street without a licence. When the police stopped him and confiscated his goods, he was so angry that he set himself on fire. Rioting followed with protesters gathering outside the regional government headquarters, demonstrating against the police treatment of Mohamed Bouazizi.
The incident sparked a continuing series of street demonstrations taking place throughout Tunisia. People were demonstrating against unemployment, food inflation, corruption, freedom of speech and poor living conditions. The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and have resulted in scores of deaths and injuries. Finally on 15 Jan 2011, President Ben Ali officially resigned and fled to Saudi Arabia after 23 years in power.
To understand this puzzling “abandonment” of support for President Ben Ali in such a short time, one can read these three reports written just before the Tunisia’s 2004 and 2009 elections:
Human Rights Watch
Tunisia: Elections in an Atmosphere of Repression
23 October 2009
[URL]http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/23/tunisia-elections-atmosphere-repression[/URL]
BBC News
Tunisia’s image belies poll control
23 October 2009
[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8321452.stm[/URL]
BBC News
Tunisia’s lacklustre election
23 October 2004
[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3947901.stm[/URL]
In fact, after reading these three reports, you will find that they could have easily been talking about a certain country also being run by a strongman for 45 years. There are some similarities in the modus operandi but admittedly, that strongman uses a milder version.
.
Kojakbt
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Tunisia President Ben Ali’s resignation on 15 Jan 2011 was most puzzling in view of the fact that he had won a major landslide victory in the election 2009 fifteen months earlier.
On 25 Oct 2009, Tunisia held its presidential and parliamentary elections. The Interior Ministry released the official election results the next day showing that the incumbent President Ben Ali had won 89.6% of the votes. His nearest rival could only manage 5%. This was the fifth consecutive win for the president since he took power 23 years ago. Voter turnout was recorded at 89.4% with 4,447,388 of Tunisia’s 5.3 million registered voters participating.
In the parliamentary election, the president’s ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), had also scored a major landslide victory by winning 84.6% of the votes, snatching majority of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The RCD won 161 out of 214 available seats (i.e., 75.2%). RCD has governed continuously since Tunisia’s independence from France in 1956.
Fifteen months later, in a popular uprising now being named, The Tunisian Revolution or The Jasmine Revolution, President Ben Ali has bowed out and fled Tunisia unceremoniously.
The riots and demonstrations that have swept through Tunisia began with a small incident in mid-December. Twenty-six-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, living in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, was a graduate but with no job. To earn some money he took to selling fruit and vegetables on the street without a licence. When the police stopped him and confiscated his goods, he was so angry that he set himself on fire. Rioting followed with protesters gathering outside the regional government headquarters, demonstrating against the police treatment of Mohamed Bouazizi.
The incident sparked a continuing series of street demonstrations taking place throughout Tunisia. People were demonstrating against unemployment, food inflation, corruption, freedom of speech and poor living conditions. The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and have resulted in scores of deaths and injuries. Finally on 15 Jan 2011, President Ben Ali officially resigned and fled to Saudi Arabia after 23 years in power.
To understand this puzzling “abandonment” of support for President Ben Ali in such a short time, one can read these three reports written just before the Tunisia’s 2004 and 2009 elections:
Human Rights Watch
Tunisia: Elections in an Atmosphere of Repression
23 October 2009
[URL]http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/23/tunisia-elections-atmosphere-repression[/URL]
BBC News
Tunisia’s image belies poll control
23 October 2009
[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8321452.stm[/URL]
BBC News
Tunisia’s lacklustre election
23 October 2004
[URL]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3947901.stm[/URL]
In fact, after reading these three reports, you will find that they could have easily been talking about a certain country also being run by a strongman for 45 years. There are some similarities in the modus operandi but admittedly, that strongman uses a milder version.
.
Kojakbt
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