The French newspaper Le Monde published a report, in its September 3, 2021 issue, entitled “The social challenge, Achilles’ heel of Tunisian President Kais Saied”. Extracts:
“We will block as long as our demands are ignored.” Mounir Helali proclaims this with the aplomb of a hardened combat activist. A black cap with a long brim, a thick black beard – stitched with a white betraying the years – the sturdy 35-year-old is sitting on a mattress thrown on a concrete slab.
He could not stop waiting, imperturbable, in the hot dust-soaked air of Redeyef, one of the mining centers of this Gafsa basin swarming in the steppes of west-central Tunisia. Here, the summer light that shines on the stone hillsides is so blinding that you have to quickly nestle in the first shelter you come across, according to the same source.
“Words but few actions”
In this part, Redayef’s sit-in and the mining problem were the main axes discussed and analyzed.
“Elsewhere in the Gafsa basin, and in particular in the main extraction center of Metlaoui, production has restarted at the start 2021 after years of blockages and disruption. The “sitineurs” – as these followers of the sitin are called in Tunisia – of Redeyef have refused to break camp. ”
They express in their own way the permanence of social unrest in Tunisia, which the Head of State, Kais Saied, took advantage of during his victorious 2019 presidential campaign, but which, for lack of solutions (the unemployment rate of graduates is around 38% in the Gafsa region), could seize his mandate without delay, according to the same source.
Resentment against elites
In a statement granted to the French newspaper, Lakhdar Souid, journalist and municipal elected official in Gafsa warned: “” If Kais Saied does not manage to alleviate this feeling of regional injustice, he will not be able to prevent a resumption of the actions of blocking the phosphate ”
But what latitude can Kais Saied have with CPG staff which have already tripled over the course of social movements since 2011 – from 9,000 to 30,000 – while production fell by more than half ? Asked “Le Monde”.
Adapted from “Le Monde” Newspaper
Rifi-JDD
