Tunisia - November 24th, 2018

General Strike in Tunisia

Down with the starvation plan of the government of Essebsi-Chahed, under theIMF’s command!
Raise the wages to the level of the typical basket!
No more unemployment, hunger or misery!

On November 22nd, a general strike shook Tunisia. It was called by the UGTT, the main federation of trade unions. According to official data, 650,000 public employees affiliated to the UGTT (out of 800,000) took part in the strike. But also, workers from other sectors were part of this day of struggle too. There were massive demonstrations in Tunis (the Capital City) as well as in the main cities of the country such as Kasserine, Gafsa, Sfax, Gabes and Sidi Bouazid, among others.
The masses went on a strike and took the streets because they cannot take the starvation conditions anymore. The 900 dinar wages (around 300 dollars) is so low aprotesting teacher declared “I cannot buy food, pay my debts or the education of my son” while marching. However, this situation is lived only if you are lucky enough to get a job, because the unemployment is sky-high. The youth is most affected by unemployment, reaching up to 40%. In addition, the cost of living increases month by month.
That is to say, the engine of this new day of struggle in Tunisia is hunger, as it was in the beginning of the 2010-2011 revolution.In those years, the Tunisian masses rose in all the cities of the country, when they couldn’t even buy bread. The symbol of this was Mohamed Bouazizi, a computer technician that burnt himself when the police confiscated his vegetables sales chart, which was his only mean of subsistence. This was the spark of a fire that ran as gunpowder through Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria and the entire region. These great mass actions had the workers as the main players, including a huge bulk of unemployed and also poor peasants. Millions of exploited clashed with the respective dictatorial governments and regimes, all servants of imperialism, thus opening huge revolutions. At that time, all the devices of control of imperialism in the region were overthrown, as it happened with Ben Ali in Tunisia, the “pharaoh” Mubarak in Egypt, Qadafy in Libya, while the exploited threatened to topple Al Assad in Syria and reach the very borders of Israel. Before, in 2008-2009, the Iraqi masses had imposed the expulsion of the US troops from Iraq.

These processes were diverted by the sinister policy of the leaderships of the working class in the world of saying those processes were the “Arab spring”, of a “struggle of the barbaric people (as they called them) to get democracy”. This way they took the masses to the “democratic” deceptions of elections and fraudulent constituent assemblies of imperialism and its agents, which ended up with counterrevolutionary fascist coups. Thus today we see once again a military dictatorship in Egypt, the return of the Qadafyist bourgeoisie to the decomposing Libyan state and, as in Tunisia, a government of the “Niida Tunis” party, which is made by former officials and figures of the party of the dictator Ben Ali (RCD), with the same caste of judges with supreme powers and the same officers caste of the armed forces.

After the diversion and betrayal to the Tunisian revolution,
the IMF strangles the nation with double and triple chains

In 2011, the Maghreb and Middle East were shaken by a huge revolution for bread. The exploited and oppressed are standing on top of the “black gold” that supplies of energy to 80% of the planet, and yet they couldn’t stand anymore the hunger, the increase in the cost of living and unemployment. That was the engine that pushed the masses to the revolutionary struggle. Many of those fights, as in Syria and Yemen, were crushed before they were developed, because of the panic that imperialism had, fearing those governments could fall and put into question the stability of the Saudi Arabian “Al Assad” which is the monarchy, and also the infamous Yemeni regime.
The 2010-2011 revolution did not succeed. The conditions of hunger and misery were deepened and thus we reached to a desperate situation… so desperate that no more than a year ago there has been a riot that set the entire Tunisia on fire, and it was not the first time. There were many days of struggle like this since the beginning of the revolution. The government has been giving some subsidies or a tiny raise, as it was forced because the mass struggle threatened to reopen the 2010-2011 revolution.
After the last riot, the Tunisian government promised subsidies and plans… Those were just promises of “improvement” as it has done over the years. The last of the promises was a wage increase, which did not happen. The IMF denied the funds to the government, and they were needed for this raise. The IMF demanded a cutting-expenses plan, which the government (as a good lackey of the IMF) has been wanting to apply for long, but it is unable to do so due to the mass struggle.

The Trade union bureaucracy and the Tunisian pro-imperialist left continue to save the starvation regime that sells out the nation

This action of the government wasn’t enough to contain the masses. All the political parties of Tunisia, whether from “the left” or “the right”, the “islamists”, the “democratic” ones and so on took the masses to the ballots. For example, a few months ago they did so, thus supporting the current government and its president, which is under the IMF command.
The “opposition” to the government, the movement Ennahda, is the first minority in the parliament, from where supports this attack on the masses. On the other hand, the so-called “anti-capitalist” left, in a left coalition called “Popular Front” (led by Hama Hammami) denounces the cutting expenditure plans of the IMF, demands raises and calls to demonstrations, but always ends up in elections, not to mention that it was part of the “National Salvation Front” with Niida Tunis, which took that party to power and placed the current president in office, Essebsi.
But maybe the main pillar of supporting the government is the UGTT bureaucracy. Facing each mass assault, this bureaucracy kept the workers forces tied up, and supports the dialogue tables with the government in a true social pact regime. This device has been working to stop the mass offensives, and it was recognized by imperialism by giving them the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, while the imperialist press showed Tunisia, with its elections and a social pact regime with the UGTT bureaucracy, as an example of democracy, the masses are still suffering from starvation and misery. This democracy is only for the rich…while for the workers and the poor there is nothing, neither bread nor work or a decent life.
This is lived by the broad Tunisian masses, and this is why so many days of struggle… and now they have reach to an upper stage with the general strike, with the workers in the centre of the scene paralyzing the production and the working of Tunisia, showing that the working class is the one making the economy work. The masses, in their struggle against the attack of the IMF and its lackeys of the Tunisian government put the UGTT bureaucracy between a rock and a hard place and forced it to call for that strike, as it attempted to place itself on top of the masses volcano to stop the eruption… or at least to control it and prevent the 2010-2011 revolution from re-opening. This is so, that its main leader, NuridinTaboubi, declared that if this situation in Tunisia continues, “soon we will have a hunger revolution”.

The way forward is the struggle on the streets! The IMF and the Tunisian bourgeoisie only yielded before a generalized uprising, as those that had been recurrent in Tunisia. Down with the starvation pacts of the government of Essebsi-Chahed, under the IMF commands! Work for all with wages equal to the typical basket!
Down with the trade union bureaucracy! Let the “revolutionary workers and popular councils” return! Soldiers committees!
For the fall of this regime and government, continuity of Ben Ali and its murderous police and judge caste! Free the more than 3000 political prisoners! For workers militias!

To conquer bread, work and a wages to the level of the typical basket and a decent life, we need to re-take the 2010-2011 revolution, this time to victory. This can only be as a part of a single intifada in the entire Maghreb and Middle East, fighting together with the Palestinian people that fights against the Zionist occupier to recover the land, the Syrian masses that resist in the last trenches of the revolution, the Iranian exploited that fight against the counterrevolutionary regimes of the Ayatollahs…
Victory Will come as a joint struggle together with the workers in France, today in a process of struggle against the plans of attacks against the Fifth Republic and Macron’s government. They, as the workers of all the imperialist powers, have the opportunity of raising the demands of Tunisia and all the French colonies and unifying the workers against the same enemy that imposes the same conditions of starvation and misery in the semicolonial world, as in the very France: The imperialist parasites and the lackey governments.

 

Abu MuadandAbu Muhajer
Forthe paper “The Truth of the Oppressed”
of the socialists of Syria and Middle East