Ben Jaafar won\'t tolerate political violence

Speaker of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) Mustapha Ben Jaafar took part on September 20 and 21 in the European Conference of Presidents of Parliament, hosted by PACE in Strasbourg. The conference saw the participation of presidents representing 47 European parliaments, in addition to the presence of Tunisia, Morocco and Palestine. In his Friday's lecture entitled ‘Arab Revolutions: Challenges and Prospects,’ Jaafar explained that the revolutions of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Morocco were all peaceful. He pointed out that Arab countries are capable of change, without the need of having bloody military coups which confirms the presence of a strong civil society in spite of the repression it went through. Jaafar said in the Tunis Afrique news agency: “The first lesson learned is that the Arab revolutions put an end to the typical image of the Arab people. The Arab region was an exception in the whole world in the last decades because of the image their own rulers have drawn about them. Western countries accepted this image and sometimes supported it, despite the authoritarian nature of the regimes and the serious human rights violations.” He added that Arab countries gave lessons in which democratic countries should now learn that they should not support dictators in the future. Jaafar spoke about the dangers surrounding the Arab revolutions which are represented in stepping back. This comes as a result of the lack of well organised political forces capable of keeping the balance in the political scene of some countries. The presence of these forces should guarantee there will be no drift, or prevent monopolisation between party and state. He added: “Tunisia sorted the issue of having a civil state by drafting the constitution, but other countries still didn’t resolve this issue.” Jaafar stressed that the Tunisian constitution will be for and agreed by Tunisians, and will not be a constitution for a single party. He said: “The economic problems inherited by the Arab revolutions after the former regions – like dis-occupation, poverty, social differences and deteriorated infrastructure, increases the load over the new governments.” He stressed on the importance of recovering the stolen money. Jaafar tackled the last protest, stressing: “The extremist Salafist minority doesn’t represent Tunisian people who are against violence and have moderate values and orientations. This minority will not reach their goals because of the strong determination of Tunisians to apply the power of law and institutions and to agree on disagreed issues.” He invited the European parliamentarians to rapidly release Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, starting with activist Marwan Barghouti. Jaafar said he will no longer tolerate in the future political violence, and will spare no effort to protect the national and foreign institutions across the whole Tunisian territory. He said that Tunisia needs the assistance of its friends, primarily France to take up the socio-economic challenges, carry out successfully its democratic transition and manage the organisation of free elections like those of October 23 2011. He reiterated his call to France to speed up steps that will help the recovery of the stolen assets, as it is a legitimate claim by Tunisia. span