The EconomistAugust 3rd 2019 Middle East & Africa 432 earn $250 a month,” says Alaa Abu Aqleh, a
business graduate also waiting to board a
bus. That is half of what a low-wage job in
Ramallah would pay, to say nothing of
work in the Gulf.
Not surprisingly, doctors in Gaza say
dozens of their colleagues have left in re-
cent months. Apart from low pay, medical
staff must cope with daily blackouts and
routine shortages of everything from baby
formula to cancer drugs. Worried about a
shortage of doctors, Hamas has stopped is-
suing them with travel permits. A poll in
December found that 48% of Gaza resi-
dents want to emigrate, compared with
22% in the West Bank. “Pessimism is
spreading over every corner of this place,”
says Sameer Abu Mudallala, an economics
professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.
Egypt still caps the number of daily trav-
ellers at around 300. A waiting list runs to
more than 10,000 people. Young men in
particular struggle to obtain permits be-
cause of security concerns on the Egyptian
side. To jump the queue Gazans pay thetan-
seeq, or “co-ordination”, a polite euphe-
mism for a bribe. Brokers in Gaza collect it
and distribute the money to officers in
Egypt. (Hamas is also thought to take a cut,
though it denies this.) Prices start at
$1,000, almost triple the average monthly
wage. Families sell land or gold to get their
sons across. “It’s ironic. The main issue, for
a long time, was for Palestinians to return
home. It was a dream,” says Mr Abu Mudal-
lala. “Now we’re paying money to leave.”^7T
here arerarely heartfelt funerals for
Arab presidents. Those who pass away
while in office are laid to rest in stage-man-
aged events, more spectacle than remem-
brance. Others live long enough to fall out
of power, and out of favour with their suc-
cessors. Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s sole
democratic leader, ousted by the current
president, was unceremoniously dumped
into a grave in the early morning after his
sudden death in June.
The greatest tribute to Beji Caid Essebsi
is that he was an exception. The president
of Tunisia, the only country to emerge
from the Arab spring as a democracy, died
on July 25th. Mr Essebsi, who was 92,
steered Tunisia’s nascent democracy
through a rough patch. He also failed to fix
many of its problems. But he left behind a
country that held an orderly transfer of
power and will elect a new democratic
leader in September. For that, even his de-
tractors were grateful. The expressions of
sorrow after his death were genuine.
An old man, a mandarin of the ancien ré-
gime, Mr Essebsi was an odd fit for the pres-
idency of a young and newly free country.
After studying law in Paris he returned
home to a long string of official posts under
the dictators who ruled Tunisia for half a
century: ambassador to France and Ger-
many, foreign minister, speaker of parlia-
ment. The revolution of 2011 brought a brief
stint as interim prime minister. That might
have been the end of his career.
History went a different way. The first
elected government after the revolt was led
by Ennahda, a moderate Islamist party. In2013, after two political assassinations
sparked mass protests, it agreed to step
down. Mr Essebsi returned to the scene as
the head of Nidaa Tounes, a coalition of
secular forces determined to unseat En-
nahda. He won a presidential election in
2014 with 56% of the vote and his party
gained a plurality in parliament.
Some Tunisians compared Mr Essebsi
to Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the general who led
the coup against Mr Morsi and his Muslim
Brotherhood. Before the election they
joked that the only difference between the
men was “a dot”, a reference to the similar-
ity of their names in Arabic. The compari-
son was unfair. Though Mr Essebsi wanted
a stronger presidency, he did not try to dis-mantle Tunisia’s democracy. Unlike Mr
Sisi, who crushed the Brotherhood, Mr Es-
sebsi struck up a friendship with En-
nahda’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi. Until
last year Nidaa Tounes governed in concert
with Ennahda. A few of Mr Essebsi’s pet
projects were laudable, notably an effort to
grant women equal rights under inheri-
tance laws, which was approved last year.
The economy was a constant struggle,
though. An imf-backed austerity pro-
gramme outraged the public. As Mr Es-
sebsi’s support waned, his party splint-
ered: about half of his mps are now aligned
with other groups. Over the past year he fell
out with the prime minister, Youssef
Chahed, who will lead his own secular fac-
tion in parliamentary elections in October.
The speaker of parliament, Muhammad
Ennaceur, has taken over as interim presi-
dent. A transition had been imminent any-
way: Mr Essebsi did not plan to seek a sec-
ond term, saying a younger person should
hold the job. His death simply speeds up
what looks to be an uncertain vote. Polls
show established parties doing poorly. In
June lawmakers approved amendments to
the electoral law that block several popular
would-be candidates, such as Nabil Karoui,
a media magnate whose television channel
is often critical of the government. Mr Ka-
roui was subsequently charged with mon-
ey-laundering, which would seem to scup-
per his chances.
Since the uprising, Tunisia’s politics
have often been reduced to a struggle be-
tween Islamists and secularists, or be-
tween entrenched labour unions and pow-
erful businessmen linked to the old
regime. The public is growing tired of these
factions. Established parties are in chaos
and voters are hungry for political outsid-
ers. The next president, whoever it is, will
be judged above all on his or her handling
of a sluggish economy. Mr Essebsi was
right: Tunisia needs a younger leader—one
not caught up in the battles of the past. 7CAIRO
For all his flaws, Beji Caid Essebsi helped preserve Tunisia’s democracyTunisiaA fond farewell
Essebsi leaves the stage