Tunisia

The 14th of January Front

On the 20th of January 2011 a number of Tunisian radical left organisations, notably the PCOT (Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia) and the PTPD (Patriotic and Democratic Labour Party), constituted a Front. This Front was named the «14th of January Front» in reference to the date of President Ben Ali’s rout.The object of the 14th of January Front is to undertake the organisation of the resistance against the present transitional government, which still includes leaders of Ben Ali’s party the RCD (Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique), and to build a popular alternative based on the existing vigilante committees that have been constituted in a number of neighbourhoods in Tunisia with the aim to defend the inhabitants against the terror disseminated by RCD thugs and the presidential police. The call is addressed to all the progressive political, trade-union, associative forces, asking them to fulfil the objectives intended by popular Tunisian revolution.

Here is the founding text: (http://www.albadil.org/spip.php?article3675 ):

In asserting our commitment to the revolution of our people who has been fighting for its rights to freedom and to national dignity, and has made great sacrifices, dozens of martyrs, thousands of wounded and imprisoned, in his struggle to overcome internal and external enemies and to thwart aborted attempts to crush these sacrifices, we have constituted the “14 of January Front”, a political framework «which will work for the advancement of the popular revolution for the realisation of its objectives and oppose the forces of counterrevolution. This framework consists of parties, progressive and democratic national organisations.

The Front’s immediate urgent tasks are as follows:

1 – To overturn the present Ghannouchi government or any other government that adopts the old regime’s symbols and its antinational, anti-popular policy that benefited the fallen president.

2 – To dissolve the RCD, confiscate its head-office, property, assets and funds, given that they all belong to the people.

3 - To form an interim government enjoying the trust of the people and the progressive militant political, associative, trade-union and youth forces.

4 – To dissolve the House of Representatives, the Senate, all fictitious organs as well as the High Magisterial Council. To dismantle the political structure of the old regime and to prepare the election of a Constituent Assembly, which within a year at the most, is to formulate a new democratic constitution and lay the foundations for a new juridical system covering public life, and guaranteeing political, economic and cultural rights to the people.

5 – To dissolve the political police and adopt a new security policy founded on the respect for human rights and the primacy of the law.

6 – To bring to justice all those guilty of having stolen public funds, committed crimes against the people such as: repression, imprisonment, torture and humiliating treatment – from decision taking to execution –, and finally all those found guilty of corruption and embezzlement of public property.

7 – To dispossess the old ruling family, their kin, associates and all civil servants who misused their position to enrich themselves at the expense of the people.

8 – To provide jobs for the unemployed, urgently grant unemployment benefits, improve social care, increase the purchasing power of wage earners.

9 – To restructure the national economy so that it serves the people and ensure that the State supervises vital strategic sectors. To re-nationalise the institutions that have been privatised by the previous regime and to set an economic and social policy that will break away from capitalist liberal approach.

10 – To guarantee civil and individual liberties, particularly the freedoms to demonstrate, to organise, of expression, of the press, of information and thought, the release of prisoners and the promulgation of an amnesty law.

11 - The Front salutes the support of the Tunisian revolution by the popular masses and the progressive forces in the Arab countries and internationally, and invites them all to pursue their support by all possible means.

12 – The Front calls for resistance to the normalisation of relations with the Zionist entity and its penalisation, and the support of national liberation movements in the Arab countries as well as worldwide.

13 - The Front calls all popular masses and nationalist and progressive forces to pursue the mobilisation and the struggle in all legitimate forms, particularly in the streets, in order to achieve their objectives.

14 - The Front greets all committees, associations and forms of popular auto-organisation and invites them to enlarge their area of intervention in all that concerns the exercise of public affairs and other aspects of daily life.

Glory to the martyrs of the Intifada and Victory to the revolutionary masses of our people.

Tunisia, January 20th, 2011

** Ligue de la gauche travailliste [Left Labour League]

** Mouvement des unionistes nassériens [Nasserite Unionist Movement]

** Movement of the nationalists democrats (Al-Watad)[Nationalist Democratic Movement]

** Courant Baasiste [Baasist Current]

** Gauche Indépendante [Independent Left]

** Parti communiste des ouvriers de Tunisie [Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia]

** Parti du Travail Patriotique et Démocratique [Patriotic and Democratic Labour Party).