The problem is that unlike humans, there is no official death certificate for political parties,they can keep on haunting the people like ghosts for as long as they can pay for the rent of their offices and the wages of their “cadres”. Take the POCT of “camarade” H.Hammami, a Marxist-Leninist-Trotsky st-Stalinist party which should have been buried long time ago but is still persistently trying to find a suitable “proletariat” to lead. It simply refuses the passage of time. Yes, the opposition is dead but its rotten corps is still laying on the ground, decomposing in the mids of the living and waiting for a benevolent coroner to write its epitaph and bury it.
Unfortunately there are no “volunteers” who are willing to remove the “carcasse” from public display. Thus aggravating the risk of disease and widespread contamination among the populace, especially the young which represent 70% of the population.

But what were the reasons behind this undignifying end?

It is tempting to blame the regime for this horrible “murder” as it tries to silence and kill any microscopic spark of dissent, even within its own ranks. But the reasons which led to the death of the opposition are more innate than external (the regime), for it reflects the broader apathy among the “people” for what the now defunct opposition stood for :

  Its detachment from the politics of confrontation (thus loosing the respect of the public),and its foggy political agendas, as opposed to the regime’s. This opposition has never been able to move from the politics of mere protests (often for jailed “camarades“ of other movements!) to that of targeting real power. Politics is about power (to put into effect the desirable changes) or it is nothing.

  The never ending internal scheming,positioning and re positioning,creating in the process very bizarre coalitions, swinging in all directions, as if the end of dictatorship was imminent, but in the end it was their pendulum which stopped swinging, not the regime’s, at least not for now.

  The opposition was run by five people, appearing as modern leaders but were in no sense modernizers. All of them were mini-dictators with a marked disdain for their own parties and followers, speaking the language of Parisian salons (l`opposition caviar!) with little in common with their working-class base, fiercely defending their names and positions as leaders against anyone who dare to question the legitimacy of their longevity, unconsciously mirroring the methods of the man they tried to “dethrone”. To this gang of 5, loyalty to the leader was more important than loyalty to the party, and to this end they had shown a remarkable survival mechanisms, adjusting to political defeats, social upheavals, discontents within their ranks...etc. They were the geniuses of survival and adaptability, but now it’s over, they`ve reached a dead end, or as we say in the Tunisian dialect : وقفت الزنقت لسارق (this include Ben Ali too, for in his crazy drive to obstruct any meaningful expression of different views he ended up smashing the only “facade” - no matter how “facade-like” it was in reality - of democratic governance which was represented by the now dead opposition).

Tunisia is still crying out for a “real” opposition that listens and responds to its people,but until then, the RCD remains the “natural” party of government.

Not to be continued.