Politics

Tunisia-Jawhar Chatty: It will no longer be a remake of 2011

A “new” revolution is advancing, nearly in silence. It will not be a remake of the “one” in 2011, “imported” and without a leader, at least an autochthone leader!

Instead of a solemn, traditional speech from Carthage, President Kais Saïd, firm, straight in his boots, favoured to move and mingle with the crowd, at Mnihla, in reaction to the nighttime juvenile “riot” of the last days. He talked to the People not from Carthage but from a working-class neighbourhood light years away from the upscale neighbourhoods of La Marsa or Mutuelle-Ville …

The Mister knows what he’s doing. For a presumed autistic person, he even understands too well what he is doing and where he plans to go. Striking admittedly is the similarity of the shouts of the crowd, their demands, their pressing and urgent calls, between those of yesterday in Mnihla around Kais Saied and those today at Avenue Habib Bourguiba.

Such a remarkable coincidence, unquestionably the sign of a certain continuity, at least of a certain common thread of an unyielding, impenetrable logic of which only authentic autistic people have the secret! The target is now known. Declared: the parliament that the crowd calls for its disbandment. However, the real target to be “knocked down”, to “cleared” in order to persist in the revolutionary lexicon is none other than the current house speaker, moreover and above all the leader and president of the Islamist movement Ennahdha.

It won’t be a 2011 remake.

Today, the new March appears to have a leader even if he is present-absent. Today, the Avenue the symbolism it represents and tomorrow Bardo maybe. Bardo because it is by far the clearly contested centre of power … not to say detested by the crowd. Perhaps! The next few days will tell us …