Who says no one cares about a wonky subject like decentralized power? Asks Joe Mathews from Tunis.
A first-of-its-kind debate Thursday night between major parties, unions and government officials over decentralization of power was scheduled for an hour. But after 90 minutes, the translators, exhausted after a long day of work at the 2015 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, went home.
The debate raged on.
Foreign attendees (including yours truly, the forum co-president) who relied on English and French translations of the Arabic debate had been gripped by the debate. But without translation, they could no longer understand what was being said. And so many left the room.
But the debate continued.
After nearly two hours, buses came for the foreigners, and staff at the University of Carthage, the host for the forum, of which the debate was a part, tried to pack up. But still, they kept talking.
The participants unwillingness to stop - and the eagerness of Tunisians in the audience to see it go on - reflected two dynamics.
The first is practical: Four years after the end of a decades-long dictatorship that centralized authority, the decentralization of power is an urgent issue. Tunisia must - for its future and under requirement of its new constitution - build an entire new structure of local and regional governance. Tunisia must also set new jurisdictional boundaries for municipalities and provinces It´s a huge task.
The second is this: despite the size and importance of the project, it hadn't previously been debated in a public forum like this. And it was clear that no one - not political parties, not the power organization of trade unions, not the government - has clear and specific proposals for how to do this. The debate had the feel of people having a really important conversation for the first time.
In that way, the debate suggested that expectations in Tunisia for progress in decentralizing power are way too high. There has been considerable talk about holding municipal elections across the country later this year, and public statements had suggested that the process could take six months. But the debate poured cold water on that.
When and how?
Mokhtar Hammami of the Interior Ministry, where he has led efforts to prepare for decentralization, suggested that a full decentralization of power could take another decade. "It will probably take us 10 years before decentralization results in something balanced and structural." That would include building up local service providing capacity, and developing structures and financial controls so that new local governments could handle large amounts of public spending.
Other panelists, while acknowledging the work to be done, argued for moving faster to conduct municipal elections. Samir Cheffi of UGTT, the alliance of trade unions, argued that elections were needed to select legitimate local representatives to be part of the decision-making as new structures were built.
The debate said little about the specifics of those structures, and much more about strategy and the process of decision-making. Kamel Gargouri, representing the social democratic oriented party Ettakatol, said the country needed "a road map" to show how it would make this transition to local government.
Tunisians have already done so much hard work - toppling a dictatorship, establishing a new constitution, electing a new parliament and a new president. But the hard, knotty work of rebuilding the country, and establishing local governments may be more difficult than all of those put together.
