(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #240 - Tunisia: The Revolution face recovery, (fr, pt)

The revolutionary process in Tunisia depends on the action of the social movement. Within 
it, the General Union of Tunisian labor union is a key element. Analysis of a force that 
oscillates between compromise with the power and will to change radical part of the base. 
---- Three and a half years have elapsed since the beginning of the Tunisian revolutionary 
process. This process saw the rebellious youth face all kinds of cons-revolution. First, 
NATO jumping on the region's huge resources from the military to the Islamist militias 
injected to fuck chaos and legitimize the dictatorship and enslavement in exchange for 
security and peace. ---- Capitalists, meanwhile States, despite the blows of weakness have 
kept most of their potential, enhanced by a galaxy of political parties, NGOs and 
reformist personalities. They responded with alacrity to the call of the pioneers plans in 
place to block the road to the revolutionary process and replace it with an opposite 
process called "democratic transition." It is limited to a restoration of the police state 
and the strengthening of liberal capitalism expensive global, regional and local looters.

Shortness of breath and the stagnation of the revolutionary process are probably not due 
solely to external factors, objectives, imposed despite their importance. Indeed, 
internal, subjective factors, specific to potentially revolutionary social forces are much 
more important.

The UGTT, domination fringe conservative

Since its birth in 1946, the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) is not limited to a 
strictly industrial action but takes a anticolonial nationalist orientation. Its major 
role in the struggle for independence role, then it retains a capacity to mobilize more 
employee-es, students, community activists, citizens than any other force. The UGTT 
remains for these reasons a decisive element in political events.

While the base pushes autonomy from the state, the union bureaucracy intends to keep its 
partnership relationship with the ruling party to protect its system and its privileges. 
Where a balancing attitude oscillating between submission and resistance to the regime. 
Where some also close to those of his ally / rival party Neo Destour [traits 1 ] hostility 
to any trade union pluralism, overly centralized structure, etc..

Since the late 1960s, with the rapid development and mass education, a skilled graduate 
work comes heavily on the labor market. Rapid unionization of public service officials 
creates a new generation of association more politicized and more open to the ideas of the 
left and far left. The trend towards independence vis-?-vis the state and the ruling 
party, democracy and the class struggle develops especially in some federations the public 
sector (education, post and telecommunications, transport, health ... ), a platform known 
as the "union left" radical opposition. The general strike of January 1978, suppressed in 
blood, was the first open ground between the UGTT and the police and the armed confrontation.

Between repression and rallying

The UGTT was then periodically repressed and partially dismantled. But every time 
continuity was ensured by an even more radical underground resistance, and has the power 
to recognize the union and negotiate new plant with it. Following the coup of Ben Ali, in 
1987, new relationships are established with power. Considerable financial resources are 
mobilized to corrupt union officials from the trade union left. On behalf of the priority 
of the fight against fundamentalist danger, some align themselves with Ben Ali, 
facilitating the establishment of a police state that eventually stifle political and 
social life.

The new official policy of the UGTT is to move from protest Culture decreed "archaic" in 
the relationship between "social partners" leading "constructive" negotiations. An 
important part of the rank and file is still involved with determination in the 
revolutionary process initiated in December 2010. While the Secretary-General Abdessalem 
Jrad negotiating a bailout with Ben Ali and his successors, regional unions and 
federations whole detach from the official position balancing and mediator to organize and 
supervise mobilization. Many trade unionists are members of the revolutionary popular 
structures, initiating occupations, as well as confrontations with the police and militias 
of the regime. After the fall of the dictator on January 14, the UGTT becomes the most 
credible interlocutor and the most representative must take into account all the maneuvers 
recovery led by the remnants of the regime, the army, the United States and 'European Union.

This is largely on the attitude of the UGTT the continuation or not of the revolution now 
rests.

Line balancing

Overlooking the National Council for the Protection of the Revolution formed in opposition 
to the mobilization of young people at Kasbah 1 and 2 to begin a partnership with a wing 
of the Ben Ali regime on the one hand and the Islamists on the other, the direction of 
UGTT was, at the time of the introduction of "democratic transition process," allow the 
interim government to hold it in place, to the detriment of democratic and social 
revolutionary rupture.

After October 23, 2012, the UGTT continues to defend a line balancing, consensus and class 
collaboration. AThese base unionists are fighting alongside the young unemployed, 
students, and citizens of the nearby areas and disadvantaged areas against the bloody 
crackdown in Gauteng, Gafssa, Sidi Bouzid, Kairouan, Kef etc.. However, the central 
management negotiates "solutions to the crisis" and called for calm and reason in the name 
of nationalism and the fight against terrorism manipulated on demand, even stimulated, 
financed and / or protected by the State.

Islamists in power, the UGTT was the main sponsor of the "national debate" and "national 
salvation conference." Other supervisors of this process, namely the Tunisian Union of 
Industry, Commerce and Handicrafts (Utica), the League of Human Rights, and the National 
Bar Association, have no equal force to play the same role Breaker social mobilizations in 
recovery. Many opposition parties adhere to a consensus rescue plan against the 
revolution, seen as carrier of chaos, violence and terrorism necessarily producing.

Mohamed Amami (Al Gard)


[ 1 ] Neo Destour was renamed in 1964 Destour Socialist Party and RCD with Ben Ali.