Transcript American Enterprise Institute

March 31, 2006

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

Now I get to Nejib Chebbi, who is the head of the Progressive Democratic Party in Tunisia and is also a Tunisian lawyer. I first met him about two years ago, but I hardly recognized him when he came because coinciding with the World Summit on Information by the United Nations, Nejib with several other activists went on a hunger strike, and it shows - a 32-day hunger strike. I’ve been reading translations of the Tunisian press over the last couple days. They’ve called Nejib a Ba’athist, they’ve called him a Zionist, they’ve called him an Islamist. He’s the first Islamist Ba’athist Zionist I’ve ever met. But most importantly, he is a liberal democratic activist and it’s a pleasure to have him here today.

Nejib Chebbi : Thank you very much, Michael. I will try in these final remarks to react not only to the papers which have been presented today, but also to the question, the crucial questions, I had in very useful meetings we had this week. Many of our partners were wondering if reform is necessary in the Arab world, if it is useful, if it is not dangerous for stability, for peace, and even for freedom itself. I think some remarks must be made about these questions.

Let me say in the beginning that reform is not an American creation. It is a very ancient, very old demand in the Arab world. It started in the second half of the 19th century. All the political thought in this time spoke about reforming the political system and education, and since the beginning of the 20th century the question of freeing women has been raised in Egypt by Samir Amin and in Tunisia in 1930 by Taha Hadad.

I want to say that reforms started in Tunisia in 1875. I will not be very long, because every Arab can speak about the history of liberalism and the tradition of liberalism in the Arab world, in each country - in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Morocco and elsewhere. In Tunisia, reform of education started in 1875. We had the first constitution in 1861. We had press end of the 19th century. We had the first political party in 1919. We choose the party who is ruling Tunisia today and which name is the Constitutional Party - this means what was important was the constitutionality for the elite at that time.

I will not be very long, I can speak really for hours about our liberal traditions. What happened in Tunisia and many other countries, that independence, although it meant social and economic progress, it meant on the political level the end of pluralism, the end of freedom, and the beginning of personal power and a system with unitary party.

I apologize for my English, it’s the first time I speak in English.

Then since that, people have been dispossessed from their liberties and many of us have been jailed since the 1950s. Then when the United States spoke for the first time, as I know, in November 2003 of the mistakes she did for sixty years, not raising the question of reform in the Arab world until it had its effects for the national security inside the United States, we say in the Arab world that that is a good thing that the United States is now aware that one of the sources of anti-Americanism in the Arab world was the collusion between the United States and regimes. For the people, our regimes are sustained, supported, armored and protected by the United States. That was one of the sources of the anti-Americanism in the region. Then today we are happy that the international community poses the problem of reforming the Arab world.

The second remark I want to speak about here is that in the Arab world, even though there is a common problem, there are distinctive processes for democratization. What is common is that nowhere in the Arab world is there a democratic system, a democratic regime. What is a democratic regime for me ? It is separation of powers, checks and balances, independent judiciary, free elections, basic human rights and freedom, and the rule of law - all that doesn’t exist in any Arab country, as a system, as a political system.

What is common in the Arab world, that in this era of globalization and free markets at the level of the whole world, we can no longer progress on the economic and social level without political reforms. This is because the state is no longer the main investor, the main creator of jobs and so on. The private sector must be mobilized to compete with others on the international level. That cannot be done without a healthy climate for business. That means freedom of press, independent judiciary, accountability, and a check on the bureaucracy.

What is common for this region is that we will never meet our economic integration, which is now an international demand for foreign investors. The markets in the Arab world are too closed to appeal to investors. We have to integrate our markets, either in the Maghreb or on the level of the whole Arab world. Without democracy, we will never meet this objective and we will lack for a very long time.

These are some of the common problems we confront. But we cannot speak about democratization in the same way in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and so on. In each country there are specific problems. But we can divide this world into two big parts.

The first one is the countries where there are no basic freedoms, like the country to which I belong, Tunisia, unfortunately for my country. In the country, Michael said to you, we were obliged a few months ago to go on a hunger strike for 32 days for claiming three basic freedoms : freedom of speech and press, freedom of association - that means the freedom to create parties and NGOs - and freeing the political prisoners.

Today there are some hundreds of political prisoners in jail in Tunisia but many thousands have been sentenced for a very long period. They finished their sentences but now they have no job, they cannot move inside the country, and they cannot speak about leaving it. They number in the thousands. The function of these prisoners is to make people afraid, to frighten those who want to express their ideas and apply themselves in the political field ; they see that they can have the same destiny that all these political prisoners face.

Then, in this country, what is necessary today, are basic freedoms. These must come before a transition toward democracy, which means reforming the constitutions, reviewing the laws and running fair elections. These basic freedoms include : Freedom for the magistrate to elect their own committee, because in Tunisia the magistrate tried to elect a free committee and the power, but the regime banned it. This means the freedom for journalists to hold their national conference. Journalists cannot today in Tunisia hold their national conference. That means that the Tunisian League for Human Rights can hold its 6th national conference. Today this NGO cannot hold its conference because it is independent. Thus in this set of countries, the problem is to liberalize.

In other countries, such as Morocco or Egypt or Jordan or Lebanon, the problem is to democratize. It’s to go forward, to transition toward democracy, which means that the population can participate in the decision process by representation. In these countries, there are many specific issues. They think if you want to help the process of democratization in the Arab world, we have to see this world country by country, because we cannot solve the problems speaking generally. This was the second remark.

The third remark I want to speak about is : what is the wait for democratization ? If we want to be realistic, the process is going. I agree with Mr. Shafeeq, we are going ahead, but very, very slowly. We have to wonder how to run faster. Some think that because of the weakness of the elite in the Arab world, when we speak generally, this reform will come from inside the regimes themselves.

I think that idea is not very true. It is not working because for the emergence of reformers from inside the regimes, there is a condition. That condition is pressure on them which makes them feel that reform is a necessity. Today the weakness of the political process doesn’t make the rulers feel that necessity and then they don’t react positively to the claims for democratization in the country.

The second one is that if the process is self-initiated by the rulers themselves, we can have what is happening for example in Russia today. But more than that, what happened in Tunisia in the 1980s. In the 1980s, President Bourguiba had been deposed by the prime minister of that era, which is President Ben Ali today. We had reforms for two years, but two years later we returned to a personal power with total confiscation of our basic freedoms. That is a risk which must be taken into account when we speak about the possibility to have the process start from inside the regime.

The second is that that process must come from within the society. I think that this is true. Even it took time, even if it is hard to do there is no other way. Today elites are awakening. For speaking about my country, Tunisia, the lawyers are independent. The magistrates tried to do, the journalists also, the trade unions, the NGOs, the political parties are awakening, claiming reform and trying to put pressure on the government to get their basic freedoms. But the population doesn’t apply themselves in this process because of a half-century of repression, a half-century which, if you want to be safe for your freedom, safe for your job, you have to be neutral in the political field.

Then that’s why this process can and must be helped by the international community. I think that supporting this process doesn’t mean intervening in the political life of these countries by force or by political means. What is necessary today is to stand behind or beside the reformers, to support them, and to practice what is now starting in the United States, public diplomacy. When we feel that Hachicha, whose sole crime is to attend this conference in January, and she’s harassed, she’s threatened in her safety and the safety of her daughter, or her husband - when we know that the State Department issued a public statement about this case, we know that the American Enterprise Institute is mobilized about her case to get her help - this will encourage the reformers to continue their struggle.

The final question I want to raise is : Is the reform in the Arab world dangerous for the interests of the United States or of the West ? That question raises the question of political Islam. I think there are many ways to deal with that question. The means of violence they have been experiencing and have experienced and failed. There are means to approach this question from an ideological point of view.

I think that way doesn’t help to solve the problem. I think the better way is to be pragmatic, to see the facts. We are in the Muslim world. Islam is very influential in the life of each individual. That’s a fact. We cannot speak about democracy in the Arab and Islamic world forgetting that fact. We cannot ignore that the mainstream today, and many of my colleagues, are for political Islam.

This is a point of view which cannot be shared but I think it’s my duty to express it. If we look to this phenomenon, which is cultural and social and political phenomenon - it’s not exogenous - we see that there is an evolution. That evolution is to accept democracy as a part of the political Islam thought. The revolutionary way failed everywhere - in Iran, in Sudan, in Afghanistan and in Algeria. Then the Islamists, put under the pressure of this experience and the evolution of the world and the Cold War, the new technology of information, the globalization at all levels - forced them to progress toward reviewing their points of view.

We have now an experience in Turkey where Islamists are ruling in a society which is not monopolized by Islamism. There is balance between the Islamists which are ruling and the society’s secularist forces which are in opposition but in a legal framework. I think this experience in Turkey must be taken into account, because it can perhaps be reproduced elsewhere.

What is happening in Palestine has two sides. The first side is relative to relations with Israel. The United States asked Hamas to recognize Israel and to accept the political process. These are problems related to the regional conflict. They are not directly related to the democratic process. From the point of view of democratic process, the experience of Hamas, which is ruling by the way of the polls and which has a very big secularist society in opposition to it, can be a new experience on the path of reform.

I will not be very long, but I want to attract your attention to the fact that Morocco will have elections in 2007. In Morocco, the trend is also in the favor of the Islamists. But in Morocco as elsewhere there are two kinds of Islamists : the moderates, which are evolving toward the acceptance of democracy, and the others which are still totalitarian.

Thus what I want to say is that the problem is to be pragmatic about this issue. There are no politics with zero risk. We have to take the risk and the solution is two-sided. First, the Islamists accept democracy and basic freedoms, and second, we don’t have to rely on the declaration but to have a secularist bloc to constitute a balance in front of them.

I want to say that in Tunisia, after the hunger strike, we engaged in discussions with the Islamists to integrate them into the political process. The discussions are going on about basic questions. For example, we are talking about equality of sex. In Tunisia, polygamy has been banned for half a century. Tunisians do not accept to come back to that the situation prior to that. Do the Islamists accept the equality of sex ?

Second, there is the question of the freedom of belief. We don’t want to have the case the Afghans had this week. It’s not possible. We ask the Islamists : Do you accept the banishment of the corporal punishment and so on ? We are discussing basic freedoms and human rights because for us, democracy is not only a mechanism to solve conflict in a society, but a way to solve conflicts in a society based on human rights. That is modern democracy. Any alternative is populism and totalitarianism.

Those are some remarks I want to submit to your reflection. I thank you.

Michael Rubin : I want to thank everyone for coming here today. You’ve just witnessed a crime being committed : the ___expression of free speech which would not be possible, as Neila Charchour Hachicha has found out, in Tunisia. Our thoughts are with her and I can assure you that AEI is going to stop at nothing to pursue this until the harassment stops against her daughter, the harassment stops against her husband, and the harassment stops against her, for the sole crime of talking out about dissent and reform. That is one thing that is not acceptable, to take the actions that the Tunisian government has been taking.

I want to remind everyone that there’s a hot lunch outside. The papers are available. We look forward to seeing you in September when we have our next group of people, which hopefully will also include Neila again.

Source : Site Web de l’American Enterprise Institute