May 8, 2021
History will remember that the Mechichi government is synonymous with the disastrous spread of Covid 19 on a large scale in our country with its procession of hundreds of thousands of victims and more than eleven thousand dead so far. In fact, even the full containment that begins this Sunday, May 9, is proving to be in vain. Witness, the scenes of inordinately teeming and haggard crowds everywhere on Saturday May 8 across the country. Shocking images, frightening images. They do not bode well in the short term.
Total Chaos
Ironically, the government announced the lockdown at the last minute. That is, without giving citizens enough time to organize themselves. Suddenly, everyone rushed towards the banks, post offices and interregional transportation stations, attacking supermarkets, pastry shops and butchers. This was the case on Friday afternoon and all Saturday May 9th. It’s the ever-present, wild concert of mingling and messy and dubious audiences. On the other hand, there was also a lack of agents and law enforcement.
Rather Dry Pseudo-chefs
Tunisians expect comforting or explanatory speeches in these times of all-out crisis. However, everywhere, the senior officials are silenced in silence. Apart from the brief, counterproductive speech by Hichem Mechichi at the start of the press conference last Friday announcing the confinement. In fact, he was laconic, without soul or empathy, bordering on unsympathetic, hardly convincing and devoid of any charisma. Content and form coincide to discourage and discomfort. In short, it is the compendium of the rather dry psudo-chefs that we have suffered for a few years and which abound at the end of the 2019 elections. Devoid of any originality, they are original by their mere banality and bearers of bad news moreover.
Escape Routes Outside
Obviously, the atmosphere is leaden. Its springs are multiple and concentric. Pandemic, isolation, serious economic crisis, rising prices, blocking of institutions and lack of prospects. In fact, the gloom is such that all the states of mind placed under our skies irreparably lead to anguish.
Generally, in such situations, the State redoubles its initiatives to inform, reassure, clear customs and bounce back. Indeed, these are the basic ingredients of crisis communication. However, this is not the case with us.
Worse, the rulers are turning away from the country as a whole after turning away from the citizens and their basic living needs. Thus we announce a visit on May 10 and 11 by the head of government to Portugal. All as long as they are looking for points of support or fanciful projects abroad. It’s like a sort of dull and fanciful compensation, a loophole. Ultimately, they reconcile the irreconcilable and combine bankruptcy on the inside with posturing on the outside.
Enigmatic Visit to Qatar
Rached Ghannouchi’s visit to Qatar in recent days remains enigmatic. Indeed, a halo of mystery surrounds it. This results in the absence of images, press releases, photos, minutes and reports in particular. At the most, rather contradictory assertions from unconditional minions and partisans and certain senior leaders of the party. The May 7 Ennahdha advisory council statement laconically referred to the party’s “partisan diplomacy”, especially during the visit to Qatar, and Rached Ghannouchi’s series of visits to Arab and foreign capitals. However, the press release speaks of “strengthening Tunisian-Qatari cooperation and increasing financial and health aid”. The rest, the details? it is the Facebook militias of the party who take care of it. With the good franquette, with blows of lies, untruths and tendentious allegations.
In any case, the President of the Republic Kaïes Saïed was not informed of this visit. Was Ghannouchi received by Temim Ben Hamad, the Emir of Qatar? Some Nahdhaoui leaders brag about it online, others deny it. In any case, there was hardly a Tunisian ambassador to Qatar during this mysterious visit. It is even said that Rached Ghannouchi would have met there the infamous Islamist preacher al-Qaradhaoui, deeply ill. In which case it sounds like a clandestine visit from a chieftain—head of clan, rather than the Speaker of Parliament.
Guilt and the Psychology of the Hunted
This becomes problematic. Indeed, Ennahdha and other protagonists now cultivate a sense of guilt heightened by the psychology of being hunted down. They know they have lost the real country, if ever they have conquered it. They accumulate failures and bankruptcies, their image collapses in public opinion, and that sometimes makes them known in a cynical and scathing way.
So, as always, we resort to artifices, to illusion, to derivatives, however toxic. A French philosopher once said that “making men dream is often the surest way to keep them asleep, precisely because dreams give them the illusion of being awake”.
The people are dying, as much from a pandemic as from disgust.
