Historical Dictionary of Tunisia by Perkins Kenneth J.;

Author:Perkins, Kenneth J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

PARTI COMMUNISTE TUNISIEN (PCT)/TUNISIAN COMMUNIST PARTY

PARTI COMMUNISTE TUNISIEN (PCT)

Although initially made up mostly of Europeans, the PCT, founded in 1920, as a branch of the French party, frequently supported nationalist demands and defended the rights of Tunisian workers. Like the Dustur Party, the communists backed Muhammad Ali when he organized the Confédération Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (CGTT) in 1924, and their support did not waver in the face of French opposition. When protectorate authorities moved against the CGTT following a series of strikes in 1925, many communists were also imprisoned. Although the ideologies of the Dustur and the communists were, in most respects, diametrically opposed, their common involvement with the CGTT permitted critics of each group to discredit it by its association with the other. Tunisian communists established their independence from the French party in 1934, but the simultaneous emergence and popularity of the Neo-Dustur made it difficult for the communists to recruit outside the European community and soon relegated them to the periphery of the political scene.

Nonetheless, the party survived. It was the only organized political opposition tolerated by the Neo-Dustur government in the first several years after independence, but despite its inability to mount a credible challenge to the Neo-Dustur, it was banned in 1963. It operated clandestinely for the next 18 years, emerging only with the enunciation of the “open government” policy of Prime Minister Muhammad Mzali. The party, led by its secretary-general, Muhammad Harmel, acquired full legal status in 1981, but legitimization did not substantially increase its membership, estimated at the time at only 2,000. The communists joined other opposition parties in boycotting the first multiparty parliamentary elections in 1986, to protest the government’s last-minute disqualification of a number of candidates.

When President Habib Bourguiba was replaced by Zine el-Abidine ben Ali in 1987, party members felt heartened, as did other elements of the opposition. But the PCT quickly lost faith in the new administration’s promises of political pluralism. Harmel accused the ruling Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD) of electoral fraud in by-elections for the National Assembly, held only a few weeks after the change of regimes. Nevertheless, the communists participated, along with other opposition groups, in the deliberations on a National Pact, presided over by ben Ali in 1988. Still wary, however, the communists did not contest the 1989 legislative elections. A period of growth and consolidation ensued, during which the party abandoned, in 1993, its communist label (but not its communist ideology) in favor of the designation Mouvement de la Rénovation (in Arabic, al-Tajdid). In the 1994 national elections, the party fielded a total of 71 candidates in 12 of the 25 constituencies and ran third behind the RCD and the Mouvement des Démocrates Sociales, polling a little more than 11,000 votes and winning four of the 19 assembly seats reserved for the opposition. In the first postrevolutionary elections in 2011, the still-insignificant party sought to bolster its prospects by joining the Pôle Démocratique Moderniste, a leftist coalition, but that alliance proved uncompetitive, winning only 2 percent of the vote and five seats.

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