The historic televised public testimonies of survivors of the repressive regimes in Tunisia since 1950s can open the way for transitional justice in the country.

Tunisia has moved from a romantic story to a testing ground for transnational political Islam, the global strength of the market economy and the potential for progressive politics and a new way of being in our world.

To understand Tunisia, one must get to grips with its labour movement. UGTT has enjoyed a continuity in history and presence across the country which is paralleled only by the ruling party at its height under Bourguiba and Ben Ali.

In Tunisia, the resigning former Prime Minister and Ennahda leader, Hamadi Jebali, is being groomed for a presidential role by his party as well as international players, in a bid to market an “acceptable” Islamism.  

Such a division over bodies stands in dialectical relationship to the division of the body politic in the country. It is a result of a polarized polity and the visible expression of it at the same time.

Responses to his death may well mark the end of the line for Islamist politics as we know it in Tunisia.  It may also mark the rise of a unified opposition, which now realizes that its fight is not only, or no longer, for freedom of expression and association but an existential one, a matter of survival.