President, PM Quit RCD: Does it Mean Anything?

I've been saying for several days that the future of the all-powerful RCD Party in Tunisia will determine whether there's anything very revolutionary about the Tunisian Revolution. But window-dressing won't convince anyone. Three new Cabinet appointees from the UGTT labor movement have already quit the new government due to the presence of key RCD holdovers. Now President Fouad Mebazza and Prime Minister Mohammed Ghanouchi have sought to calm things by quitting the RCD. But of course both men are RCD stalwarts, Ghannouchi having been PM for more than a decade. He's an economist and technocrat, but still from the heart of the old regime.

The ruling party has been called many names through the years — Neo-Destour, Destourian Socialist Party, RCD — but it is still the same highly centralized, all-pervasive ruling party that it was. If everyone quit the RCD and started a new party, it wouldn't mean it was really something new. (The RCD has also reportedly expelled Ben Ali from his membership. Now that he's gone.) The point is not whether they change the name again, or everyone quits the RCD and joins something new; the point is whether there is going to be one single, all-pervasive party, or a genuine spectrum of political movements. I suspect the crowds aren't complaining about the number of card-carrying RCD members in the interim government, but about the number of familiar faces. Quitting the party may be a nice gesture, but it doesn't get to the heart of the complaint.

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