Tunisian opposition rejects aid pledge, urges more protests

Bloomberg

Tunisia’s main opposition parties derided a government pledge to
increase aid for low-income families, urging Tunisians to step up protests over IMF-backed austerity measures as the country marks the seventh anniversary of the
revolt that inspired the Arab Spring uprisings.
“Government actions are just painkillers and cannot deal with the situation,” Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, head of the opposition Democratic Movement, said in an interview. “The Tunisian ship will sink” unless solutions are found, he said.
The aid offer was announced by Social Affairs Minister Mohamed Trabelsi late on Saturday, with the government vowing to raise the welfare budget by 100 million dinars ($40.2 million), with poor families set to receive a 20 percent increase in aid. About 250,000 families are expected to benefit from the measures, which also include a 70 million dinar increase
in pension payments and the expansion of healthcare provisions for the unemployed.
The concessions came after opposition groups urged Tunisians to “reclaim their revolution” in major demonstrations on Sunday marking the uprising that ousted autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The street protests in 2011 rippled across the region, triggering similar uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen that changed the face of the Middle East.

Mass Arrests
The protests have presented the cash-strapped government of Prime Minister Youssef Chahed with one of its most serious challenges since taking office in 2016. Last week, protesters in several cities clashed with police over a 2018 budget that cuts spending and raises taxes to bring the deficit to below 5 percent of gross domestic product. One person was killed in the confrontations, and the
Interior Ministry said more than 700 people were detained.
Another leading opposition party, the Popular Front, dismissed the government offer as “far from meeting the minimum required to alleviate the cost of living.”
In a statement marking the anniversary of the revolution, it called on Tunisians to continue protesting peacefully until the government removes inflationary measures from the budget.
Tunisia promised to undertake austerity measures to help win a $2.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund in 2016,
but those steps have foundered
in the past in a nation suffering from unemployment of about 15 percent and youth joblessness that’s double that.

Democracy Progress
Tunisia has made more advances towards building a democracy than any other Arab Spring country. But political infighting, strikes, demonstrations and terrorist attacks have complicated
efforts to engineer the kind of economic revival Tunisians had envisaged when they pushed Ben Ali from power.
The ruling coalition of Nidaa Tounes and the Ennahda parties have blamed the latest unrest
on opposition parties, claiming they were maneuvering for power ahead of May elections.
President Beji Caid Essibsi on Sunday plans to visit the capital’s Tadamon neighbourhood — a densely populated, working class area that has seen some of the biggest protests in the past week — in an effort to ease tensions.
But the additional welfare measures, and their rejection, signal that the government’s economic reform plans may stumble once again. The coalition is “now under even more pressure, increasing the possibility that much-needed reforms will in their original or amended forms once again become stalled,” Anthony Skinner, Middle East-North Africa director at Verisk Maplecroft, said in an emailed note.