It was Tunisian workers who drove the dictator out.
On Thursday night Ben Ali was going to tough it out. On Friday he fled. What changed?
The normally regime friendly leadership in the General Union of Tunisian Workers, known by its French initials UGTT, under pressure from its rank and file, called a two hour strike for Friday. Striking workers joined the demonstrations that day defying the regime. Ben Ali’s rule was finished. He joined the shuttle bus of dictators to Saudi Arabia.
Some in the UGTT leadership joined with the dictator’s old cronies to form an interim government. A day later, under pressure from their rank and file and the Tunisian people in the streets, 4 Ministers from the UGTT resigned.
The demonstrations against the old party and the interim Governemtn continue. The workers and peasants didn’t overthrow the tyrant to have his regime continue.
The interim government has brutally attacked demonstrators, showing clearly to any doubters that the the dictatorship’s new skin still covers a body that is the enemy of Tunisian workers and peasants.
The first task of the revolution is to rid Tunisian society of the filth that has ruled for the last 23 years. Tunisian workers and peasants know this and are organising now to win this first stage.
Although the Tunisian revolution is unfinished, it has won great gains already. It has removed the most ‘stable’ and repressive dictator in the region, a tyrant who ruled with massive US and European political and economic support. The revolution knows it must now purge his acolytes.
The victims of neoliberalism and repression in Tunisia have achieved the first step towards their own liberation. Not through US invasions, or relying on US support, or moderate reformers, or suicide bombers, or Arab nationalism, or Islamism, but through class struggle, through revolution from below.
Across the region, the lesson is not lost on workers and peasants as they begin to confront their dictators and challenge them and the whole imperialist project in the Middle East.
Around the globe today workers in the developed countries are under attack. Neoliberalism is stripping away their wages, conditions and jobs in country after country – from the United to Europe the brutality of profit’s primacy reigns.
We workers can learn the class lessons of Tunisia.
