Seven years after the Arab Spring, Tunisia faces an uncertain future

If Tunisia’s elite continues to fiddle while Carthage burns, the only fledging democracy in the Arab world risks self destructing or reverting to some form of authoritarian rule. It is seven years since the fall of the dictator Ben Ali. His fall decapitated the predatory ruling family and legalised political parties, not least the Islamist party Nahda. And it sparked revolts across the Arab world. However Tunisia faces a real revolution unless its leaders articulate and enact bold economic reforms which offer desperately needed hope to the country’s mass of unemployed and ill-educated young people.

The freedom of speech that followed the end of the old authoritarian regime has today too often morphed into freedom to blackmail and insult. Free and fair elections gave Nahda and its charismatic leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, a parliamentary majority in October 2011, which they lost three years later, a rare example of an Islamist party losing at the polls.