Tunisia PM warns no one safe in anti-graft ‘war’

TUNIS - Agence France-Presse

Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed was reported on June 4 as saying no one in the North African country involved in corruption would emerge unscathed in his government’s “war” on graft.

Corruption was widespread in Tunisia under longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in the 2011 uprising that spawned the Arab Spring, but it remains endemic.

Last month a dozen people including businessmen, suspected smugglers and even a former security official were arrested, in a country where nepotism and corruption are seen as a powerful brake on the road to economic recovery.

“I hear some people say this is just a campaign, but it’s not -- it is state policy... Corruption in our country is widespread,” Chahed said in an interview published on June 4 in the newspapers La Presse and Assabah.

“We aim to tear down the systems of corruption. The struggle against corruption will be a long-term war, a sustained policy,” he said.

Saying he had acted “in harmony” with President Beji Caid Essebsi, the premier vowed that “no one will be protected in this war against corruption.”

Chahed dismissed accusations that the crackdown was a countermeasure to the rise of regional social protest movements.

Some of those detained are accused of “incitement and alleged financing of the protest movement” in the south.

“It is a system that can be seen everywhere... Even social protests are exploited by this system [of corruption], and terrorists also benefit from it,” he said.

The anti-corruption arrests, made possible by a state of emergency in force since November 2015, have been largely welcomed.

But some say such measures do not go far enough, and that more is needed than the arrest of a few prominent figures.

Chahed rejected criticism of the use of the state of emergency to make the arrests.

“In exceptional circumstances, exceptional measures,” he said, adding: “Other actions are planned in this framework... People will have to get used to them”, as they have “in the fight against terrorism”.

Since the 2011 revolution, Tunisia has experienced an increase in jihadist attacks that have killed dozens of members of the security forces and 59 foreign tourists.