When Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali won a fifth term in office in October 2009, with 90 per cent of the vote, even the BBC felt moved to comment that during the election campaign the ‘only suspense’ was over the exact percentage by which Ben Ali would be declared victorious. A country lauded for its economic progress, and a popular choice for European tourists seeking a low-priced package holiday on the Mediterranean, it was also named the seventh worst country to be a blogger in 2009.
Ben Ali took over from Habib Bourguiba in a coup in 1987, and is only the second head of state since Tunisia’s independence from France was won in 1956. Despite initially raising hopes of a political culture more tolerant of dissent, Ben Ali’s rule has been maintained by the usual apparatus of a police state and there has been no more than a sham procedural democracy. The parliamentary system is designed to give the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party a guaranteed and overwhelming majority. In the run-up to elections, the regime’s critics are subject to severe intimidation and violence, while the opposition parties that are permitted to operate cannot compete against the state’s publicity machine for Ben Ali and the RCD.
