Committed to freedom and social justice
Today, we commemorate the 14th anniversary of the outbreak of the revolution for freedom and dignity, from December 17 to January 14. That historic moment began in marginalized Tunisia and opened up new horizons for the struggle for freedom, democracy, and social justice. It was a revolution forged by the sacrifices of citizens who faced repression in the squares and streets, and built upon the struggles of generations of activists from political, human rights, trade union, student, and social elites. These individuals did not submit to tyranny or its propaganda, and they accumulated a legacy of resistance and steadfastness.
Upholding the values of the revolution and defending its gains without retreat or compromise is an ongoing responsibility in the face of anything that may threaten or hollow out its substance. Freedom means guaranteeing an open public space, the right to political and civic participation, rejecting exclusion, and confronting all attempts to reproduce authoritarianism and injustice or to personalize governance. It also means rejecting all forms of guardianship over individual and collective rights.
The rhetoric of sovereignty cannot conceal our country’s slide toward new paths that entrench dependency and guardianship in matters such as migration and the loss of energy and food sovereignty. Nor can it hide the influence—now an open secret—of rising families and their associated financial groups in reproducing the backroom politics of the pre-revolution era.
Anger at authoritarian regression should not distract us from a genuine reckoning with the economic and social trajectory. This path is marked by a frightening rise in domestic debt and crises in vital sectors, most recently exemplified by the olive farming crisis, the decline in public investment, the risk of collapse in social protection systems, and the absence of alternative public policies within a framework of a fair economic and developmental vision.
Today, our country is repeating the same patterns of growth without any real structural improvements in the lives of its citizens. This contributes to widening the gap between rich and poor, concentrating wealth, and deteriorating basic services such as health, education, transportation, and others.
In this context, the Forum affirms its close monitoring of the development of social and protest movements and notes the continuing political inability to offer real alternatives that would stimulate the economy and rebuild a fair and comprehensive social protection system.
While we believe it is necessary to learn all the lessons from the failure of previous governments to deliver on their promises, this does not justify using this failure as an excuse to accept new policies that sell illusions or to repeat the same game of blaming previous governments or fabricating accusations against vague and unknown parties. The current predicament cannot be justified by the heavy legacy of the past.
In this context, the Forum affirms that the current phase requires frank acknowledgment that the path our country is on cannot be reformed and necessitates a constitutional reconstruction that enshrines effective participation, true citizenship, and all mechanisms of independent institutional oversight.
There is no way out of this complex, multidimensional crisis without loosening the stranglehold on political life, rebuilding genuine democracy in all its dimensions, protecting the gains of the revolution in freedom and pluralism, and reconstructing development policies that achieve freedom, dignity, and social justice.
Today, we must all continue to fight tirelessly on all fronts and by all peaceful means to stop the abuse, oppression, and destruction of the dreams of the disadvantaged; to put an end to threats and systematic sabotage; to reopen civic space; to free the oppressed and wronged; to preserve the dignity of migrants; and to protect our shared history of rejecting humiliation and oppression, leading to the triumph of freedom and social justice.
