Class analysis of Tunisia

By As'ad AbuKhalil, Angry Arab News Service, March 1, 2011

"Khelil wrote me this (I cite with his permission and I can confirm his analysis.  I have indeed received emails from irate Tunisians who told me that they did not want Ghannushi to step down):"

The middle class (adult and youth) is greatly irritated that Ghannoushi stepped down. [....]

A majority of Tunisians, especially the middle class, is growing resentful that leftist and Islamist factions are claiming to speak in the name of "the people" and "the revolution" and that the UGTT is undermining efforts to get people back to work. Protests are starting to attack the UGTT and the self-proclaimed committee that they have set up....claiming to "protect the revolution". The middle class does not want the UGTT to claim their voice, and this includes the youth of middle class families as well who are starting to attack the UGTT. [....]

The far-left is making much of the noise and has set up righteous committees: The January 14 Front is another case in point, a gathering of leftists, communists and even the Ba'ath movement. These committees speak presumptuously about how they are the vanguards of the revolution and they are seeking to protect it, and thus they should play a larger role in the transition. But the middle class, represented by much of the establishment press, has begun to push back and decried these groups as opportunists whose demands for, say, higher wages at a fragile economic time is selfish, that they are simply a loud minority, and that their policies would wreck the nation's economic prospects). [....]

Expect in the next days and weeks an onslaught by the middle class to discredit and even disband into the UGTT into several unions which would be easier to keep the far-left restrained; as its claim to be representing the revolution is being challenged by the middle class opposed to its economic proposals. [....]

Lastly, whatever happens in Tunisia I believe is only a taste of the class-divide battle which will take place in Egypt, where the class inequality is even more pronounced. Tunisia's division between the far-left, union and the middle class, business class (which represent the center-left, center and center-right) is tame and will be, I think, quick to quite down in comparison to the debates that will soon dominate a far larger nation like Egypt.