Anger as Tunisia grants amnesty to officials accused of corruption

Opposition groups in Tunisia have raised the alarm after parliament passed an amnesty law for officials accused of corruption under the toppled dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The law was passed on Wednesday evening after a rowdy debate in parliament. In a recent cabinet reshuffle, Ben Ali-era officials were appointed as ministers of finance and education.

The reshuffle was seen as strengthening President Beji Caid Essebsi’s grip on power months before Tunisia’s first post-revolution municipal polls.

The country has been seen as a model of democratic transition since Ben Ali was overthrown in a 2011 revolution that sparked the Arab spring uprisings.

The new law. proposed by Essebsi in mid-2015, grants an amnesty to businesspeople and Ben Ali officials on trial for corruption, in exchange for returning ill-gotten money plus paying a fine.

In the face of growing public anger, the text was revised to cover only officials accused of involvement in administrative corruption, not those who received bribes.

The presidency defended the law, saying it was needed to protect the economy and “free up the energies” of the government.

Monica Marks, an expert on Tunisian politics, said the law’s passage was “a huge symbolic victory for impunity”. “It signals a green light, from the top of Tunisia’s state institutions, to individuals engaged in abuses of power,” she said.

The law could apply to about 2,000 senior officials “who did not receive any bribes”, said the cabinet director, Selim Azzabi. It would affect people who “received instructions and applied them without profiting” under the dictatorship. He said the law could boost Tunisia’s sluggish economic growth.

Amna Guellali, of Human Rights Watch, said the law “risks perpetuating practices inherited from the old regime” and places the young democracy on a “bad slope”.

Ahmed Seddik, a leftwing politician, called for the Tunisian public to be vigilant. “Tomorrow, those who have committed crimes against you, who have stolen your money, we will find them in the highest positions as if there had been no revolution,” he said.