By Alyssa Resar, Harvard Class of 2019
On Tuesday April 4th, Dr. Moncef Marzouki offered a sobering take on the future of democracy in the Middle East and Tunisia at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. As the first democratically elected president of Tunisia, he oversaw the government’s attempts to write a constitution, institute political reforms, and maintain stability and concern for human rights.
Marzouki was proud of his people, for they “succeeded in toppling a 23-year-old dictatorship.” However, he was concerned for the future of the Tunisian government, and even suggested that the issue of corruption in the government is perhaps more significant than it was before the nation’s recent revolution. Moreover, Marzouki mentioned, political elites have not been respecting the constitution nor Tunisian people’s rights to civil liberties and political freedom.
Marzouki still thinks the revolution was essential. “Our revolution did not fail,” he argued; “the corrupt elites have not been able to totally restore the system.” He remains hopeful given the setbacks Tunisia has faced in realizing its full democratization. Part of what gives him hope is his belief that democracy takes time, and he thinks there are enough people in Tunisia who are genuinely pushing for political reform. “We lost the first battle,” he admitted, “but we have not lost the war.”
Marzouki was particularly critical of the United States’ response to revolutions in the Middle East. He views the United States’ condoning of authoritarian governments as deeply harmful to the Middle East’s democratization, because he sees the United States as granting legitimacy to dictatorships. Further, he criticized the United States’ lack of foreign aid to governments attempting to implement reforms after their initial governmental transition. The fact that the U.S. was willing to provide military aid to topple authoritarian governments was important, Marzouki said. It was not sufficient, though. Marzouki indicated that continued aid, in addition to a stronger condemnation of authoritarian governments, is crucial to success of democracy in the Arab world.
Later, when I interviewed Dr. Moncef Marzouki, we talked further about the challenges he faced as a leader in a country struggling to democratize. In particular, he told me that “it [would be] a mistake to privilege stability over democracy,” because he views some instability as inevitable in the process of democratization. Additionally, when I asked him how he balanced human rights, political stability, and national security concerns, Dr. Moncef Marzouki, a former doctor-turned human rights activist, gave an equivocal answer. He explained that human rights must be the lens through which leaders view political stability and national security because they are the foundation of all true stability and security. National security, he pressed, is a human rights concern, as is political stability. They are all interconnected.
I keep going back to the line with which Dr. Moncef Marzouki ended his speech. He looked calmly at the crowd of students and Boston locals all sitting together at the Kennedy School on a rainy afternoon. He paused before he spoke, and then said, somewhat defiantly, “It might be naïve, too naïve to try to change the world, but it is criminal not to.”
Check out video of the full forum below: