TUNISIA: No Time for Democracy

Veiled women shrilled their adulation, and students bore him on their shoulders through the streets when Habib Bourguiba returned from exile to lead Tunisia to independence. They cheered again when he deposed the old Bey of Tunis and had himself proclaimed President of the new republic. But in the last year there has been a change in the smiling, accessible Bourguiba. Since he moved into the President’s palace, he has become increasingly autocratic, petulant and impatient of criticism. Ambassadors were instructed to bow three times on withdrawing from his presence—a custom imposed by the Bey whom Bourguiba overthrew in the name of democracy.

Lone Critic. Only one influential voice, the newspaper L’Action, patterned after Paris’ outspoken L’Express, dared speak up against this autocratic trend. Last week Bourguiba abruptly silenced that voice.

In the days before independence, Bourguiba often dropped into L’Action’s office to discuss issues or give a helping hand with the layout of the paper, which he affectionately called “my baby.” He made young (28) Editor Bechir Ben Yahmed his first Minister of Information, backed him when Yahmed allowed foreign journalists to see the defects as well as the achievements of the new regime. L’Action supported the stoutly pro-Western Bourguiba in his opposition to Nasser. But as time went on, it began to criticize the long delay in providing a new constitution, urged new elections to replace the present Constituent Assembly, which is composed only of members approved by Bourguiba’s own ironically named Neo-Destour (New Constitution) Party.

Bourguiba turned hostile, and Yahmed resigned from the Cabinet. The final break came when Bourguiba brought to trial Millionaire Tahar ben Amar, a moderate nationalist who served as interim Premier before Bourguiba took over. Although Ben Amar was charged with tax evasion, the government used the trial to accuse him of “treason” in helping the Bey’s family smuggle jewels from the country. Complained old Ben Amar: “I did not want to be Premier in the first place. I only accepted because Bourguiba pleaded with me to accept.” The court’s finding: no treasonable behavior, but it levied a $75,000 fine on him for “fiscal fraud.” “A false quarrel,” snapped L’Action, adding: “His trial—which others have been spared—looked very much like a deliberate provocation, and reduces our prestige both at home and abroad.”

State Over Liberty. Bourguiba exploded. He summoned a meeting of the Neo-Destour Party executive, rammed through a vote to ban L’Action. For voting against Bourguiba’s wishes, Mohammed Masmoudi, one of the paper’s principal shareholders and once Bourguiba’s close confidant, was fired as Tunisian Ambassador to France. (His replacement: Habib Bourguiba Jr., 31.)

“I have carried this abscess too far,” declared Habib Bourguiba. “Tunisia is going through a difficult period. Freedom is dangerous.” In an interview with New York Times Correspondent Thomas Brady, Bourguiba expanded: “At the moment of a revolution there is no question of setting up a democracy like that in America. If they accuse me of dictatorship, I accept. I am creating a nation. Liberty must be suppressed until the end of the war in Algeria—until the nation becomes homogeneous.”

To the suggestion that liberty outweighs everything in importance, Bourguiba replied: “You are wrong. The state and its existence are essential before everything else. All this preoccupation with liberty is not serious.”