 Okay, I think we're ready to start. My name is Marwan Masha, I'm the Vice President at Carnegie, in charge of the Middle East program here. I want to thank everyone for coming. We're excited today to launch a new report, Tunisian Corruption Contagion, a paper that describes a very important issue that occupies the minds of all Tunisians, civil society, government, parliament, and describes the process in detail. The paper argues that corruption has become, in a way, democratized in Tunisia. It is no longer in the hands of few people, but it's now becoming a widespread phenomenon across the country. And argues that for the democratic transition to survive, the Tunisian government and civil society with targeted support from the international community must fight a two-front war to both address the former kleptocracy and the emergence of widespread pedicorruption in the country since the revolution. We are pleased to be able to discuss this important issue with a great group of speakers and all of you today. This is the first paper or report from a new Tunisia program that we have called Tunisia Monitor Project, a project which attempts to track the status of Tunisia's transition in the economic, political, and security spheres. It provides original analysis and policy recommendations from a network of Tunisian contributors and Carnegie experts to inform decision makers in Tunisia, Europe, and the United States. All of the project's materials, including analysis as well as resources and suggested reads, can be found on the newly established Tunisia Monitor website at Carnegie, Carnegie Endowment.org, special projects, Tunisia Monitor. This event is being live-streamed. By the way, and we encourage you to tweet about it using the hashtag TunisiaCEIP. Before we have a discussion about the paper and Tunisia's issue of corruption, we're very honored today to be joined by Tunisia's member of parliament and leader of the Afak Tunis party, Mr. Yasin Rahim, who will provide opening remarks. Mr. Rahim, I think is well known to most of you, who is the former minister of development, investment, and international cooperation, and previously served as the minister of transport and equipment. Mr. Rahim, the floor is yours. Thank you, Marwenna. I'm not any more, in fact, a member of parliament. I've been two months as soon as I've been appointed as a minister, I've been replaced by Mrs. Rin Mahjoub in the parliament. So I'm really very happy always to be here. And actually, last time I've been here in April 2016 when you launched the study on Tunisia, and we worked a lot together. I was minister at the time of the investment and the strategic planning, economics planning, and we worked a lot together, and I'm happy that this is followed by new studies and having this monitor initiative in Carnegie. So it's really a pleasure. So I wanted today maybe to give you an overview where we do stand, my point of view in Tunisia, of course, before being in government, my last visit as a politician was in June 2014. And at that time I was with Miriam Bolgiba, Bolgiba's granddaughter. We were a bit surprised by the enthusiasm. It was positive about Tunisia. We were just getting out from the national dialogue. We had the constitution and we are going to organize the first three elections, second ones after 2011, but I mean first elections after the constitution. And we had to moderate that enthusiasm based on the fact that we were explaining to the people that we met, it's fragile, it's fragile, especially on the social and economic challenges of course, security challenges that we were facing at the time with all what's happening in the region and what happened also in the country after the three years of the power that we had at that time after 2011. And also the political map was really under creation, new creation of political map of course on the country. So the enthusiasm was too much for the real situation in Tunisia. And unfortunately we were not wrong because we faced it. We faced it as a member of the government, the social and economic. To start with that, problems that we had, so we had to make the diagnosis ready to build a vision, a strategy and an action plan based on the five access that you will find in the government. You also report about the governance of Tunisia being a hub for the regions, for the economy, all the social needs, especially education investment that are needed, healthcare investment that are needed in the country, all the disparities that we have between the regions within Tunisia. And that's one of the main issues that we had and also how we could start because it's a country without so much natural resources, especially the problem of water, the problem of the clean energy, et cetera. So we worked on that and we started a reform plan, especially with the help of the International Institution, the IMF, we're under the program of the IMF, we're still under the program of the IMF, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, et cetera. We made a lot of reforms, a lot of new laws, banking system reform, central bank new law, the antitrust law, the investment code, et cetera. But after all these reforms and this, let's say, the speed of reforms and I organized as a minister in June 2016 with World Bank, a kind of press and diagnosis of what we have done. You see, we haven't any benchmark with the country having done so much in terms of laws. But at the end, those are papers, how, at which speed, we are really now changing things and impacting people on their day-to-day life. Any reform, take time, take years. And our problem today in Tunisia and still the problem is really a lack of good delivery. It's a question of execution. And one of the reforms that I proposed, actually, that we have a strong resistance from the unions is how we will reform the administration, how we will move Tunisia from a socioborocracy that we have for years. And that's a model, in fact, to more a country that is believing in the free market and having a social justice, but with good delivery of the projects all over the country, especially going to more PPP projects and more ambitious way of delivering in terms of governance and transparency. And that area, I consider today that we are really late and we are not doing very well. And it's one of the issues when you make a follow-up. And you see, for example, in my government, with Hibisid as a governor-chief, I'm discussing with him, we took an 18-month, 5,000 important decisions in Minister of Counsel, et cetera. 880 have been executed in one year and a half. That means that we have really a problem of delivery and execution in the country. And that's why I suggested also to have a kind of, and we had the same problem in France, close to France, in Morocco as well, to create a kind of top-level executives in the administration level. Maybe it will represent 1% of the administration, but people that could have a status that is more close to the private sector status, we can bring new blood, and we can bring also the best from the administration going to that status, well-paid, because they are not well-paid today, the leaders especially, to transform the country. We talk about 2019. The second challenge is security. As you know, in 2015, we had a very, very challenging year. I mean, we started in February. In March, we had a Bardo attack. In June, we had a Suicide attack. In November, we had a Mohamed Sain, a five-avenue attack. And in fact, it was a kind of combination of heritage, of how the country was managed before, of course, set the date, but also what's happening in Libya, especially. The chaotic situation in Libya is impacting a lot in Tunisia. All the GEDs, even if they are Tunisian, were trained in Libya. The border is 300 kilometers open. So we made a lot with the help, of course, of our friends from the G7 countries, especially in the West and Germany. Now we have a border that is more protected. We enhanced a lot also of security capabilities internally with the help of our partners. And also, we spent a lot in security forces. I'm analyzing now, in my party, we are analyzing the 2018 budget, when we see what happened in the four, five last years, and we take even an average of expenses of Tunisia in all departments. You will see the security, whatever it is, internal or military, it was twice to three times the average of the expenses that we had all over all the departments. And especially, we haven't invested enough in education, healthcare, et cetera. And the arbitrage went to security. Without security, you don't have any discussion about the economy or social issues. So that's why we did it. And actually, to be honest, maybe that's the main positive outcome that we have today after two years. We are having in 2017 some European tourists coming back to Tunisia. We didn't have any terrorist attack in the two last years. Even if you are impacted with the attacks that we had in Paris or Brussels or Germany or whatever, of course the tourism is impacted in Tunisia. But within the country, we made a lot of improvement in terms of security. That's the most positive. But we need to continue to continue to follow and invest. And certainly, the tourism has a large impact in our economy, directly or non-rightly. It's around 15 percent of the GDP. Tunisia has a history. Tunisia has a lot. I mean, it's a natural destination for so many people, especially in Europe. In Algeria as well, we had two million Algerians this year coming to Tunisia. So our security is also dependent on what would happen and how we'll solve also the issue in Libya and the chaotic situation that you are living in. The third topic concerns politics. So I won't say it's a nightmare, classical in politics. But as you know, we had the opportunity in 2014 to have a kind of alternance, in fact, the Islamists won in 2011 and in 2014 the secular one. But we haven't won sufficiently to manage a law in the country, in fact, without a clear majority in the parliament. So we started a kind of association. It's not a coalition, but association with the Islamists. They were represented by one minister in the government. But by the time the first party, especially in the Tunis, started to a little bit have a lot of problems, separated now there are four or five parties that are coming from that party. And the first group in the parliament now became, again, the Islamist group. So the Islamists have, in the last government, have a weight that is bigger. And we are talking always and especially the leaders of this party talking about the consensus that we are living in Tunisia is maybe that would make Tunisia specific and make it a success. Actually it's not so much a success. People are unhappy with what's happening in the country. It's a kind of coalition that is counter-natural, in fact, today. And there are a lot of concerns about that coalition. And the people that voted for the secular party are not happy about the fact that, and people even in the Islamist part are not happy about this coalition. And today, there is another problem that is starting to become a real issue. And that's the topic of the conference today is corruption. And what happened in, as you know, the history of Tunisia, Tunisia was a kind of kleptocracy in the Ben Ali area. Ben Ali was buying everyone to keep it, to keep it sampled. But after the revolution, the corruption become a kind of democratic everywhere. And the problem is that it started to touch the political parties. I mean, the people that are in businesses that are not clear, etc., are financing the political party. And we are even seeing them now coming to the local election that will maybe happen in the following month. And that's bad. So when we saw you shared the current government sheet, I mean, attacking this very large chapter of corruption in May of this year, we were really happy, as Tunisians before even being politicians, that finally we are taking care of this large problem. And this problem cannot be handed just by the government. The justice has to lead, in fact, the process. And as you know, when you have a dictatorship, the dictatorship will use the justice. I mean, the justice is not completely cleaned today, considered clean at least by the population today. The security forces, of course, has to be cleaned, and also the political system. The problem is that the people that were arrested in May, several of them were financing either another or Nide Tunis. And for the moment, we haven't seen any political decisions within those parties about that. And that's a problem. That's a big problem. And the consequence of that is that people are now considering that politicians are not delivering. Economically and socially speaking. And they are maybe corrupted. So this is very bad. So that's why we have, we are in a turnaround where responsibilities are, I mean, spread out politicians, but also the government, the justice, of course. And what we are now in effect, Tunis, in my party, the main, the main message that we are talking about, yes, of course, you can have doubts about politicians, ability to deliver, corruption, et cetera. But don't put all the politicians in the same basket, in fact. So the problem could be about such party or such party, but we need to build the feature in a different way. And we have opportunities. And I will finish maybe with that at the end. I want just to talk because, because I read, of course, I mean, the pre-import about the question of the past and the link also to corruption of the past. I mean, we, in effect, we were, the past is not the unique problem, of course, about corruption, of course, what was happening in the past. We consider that we've been late to start the transitional justice in Tunisia. We had to start it with the work on the constitutions very quickly because most quickly you started, better it is in term of result to get all the steps, working how the system was working, not just people, how the system was working. To ask people and to see if some of them has to go to the justice system, of course. What will be the, how we will, let's say, pay for the people that were victims of the system, of course, how we will then make the reconciliation and finish by changing the laws that were affecting the system. That's the transitional justice process. Unfortunately, we consider, and we were in opposition at that time, that the people in power at that time tried to use the issue of the past politically speaking, I mean, to press, to avoid that those people, that some of those people that were working and making politics in the past come back to the politics, to the politics fight for 2014. They, even the businessmen, of course, were pressed and pressed by the political parties in charge to buy their, I would say their freedom, actually. So it was used at a certain stage, and we were pressed to say, let go to the transitional justice as quick as possible to avoid that, in fact. So it's been done by the end of 2013, few weeks before the Troika leaves the power. And it's been started since then, and we consider globally that it's been a bit oriented. It's a political, the political, the political, I would say, power at that time was really, this law was not adopted, as I saw in the report, as a consensus. It was more driven and led by the political power that was in place at the time. So some work has been done, good work as a transitional justice process, but not at the right speed. So the president came with the reconciliation law. And the beginning, it was supposed to be with the people that were working in the administration, or ministers, responsible, etc., and also businessmen, mainly. And effect on us at a certain stage, since the beginning, we were not positive with that law, especially with the second chapter. We considered that we haven't fought in Tunisia enough corruption. We didn't have any cases of corruption, especially with the business connected to the system, that we go so quickly for a reconciliation law. It was in 2015, I guess, on that side. About the administration, our position has been always different, because in the administration case, we were talking about the people that didn't become rich because they applied some instruction from Ben Ali or Ben Ali area. These people will be qualified in the transitional justice or in the normal justice. But we are talking about people, I was minister of transport. The CEO of Tunisia that were at place after the revolution in 2012 or 2013, made one year in jail because with two or three other CEO because Tunisia, their flight time in company, was hiring people from the family of Ben Ali on the instruction of the system. So this kind of decision that were not, of course, normal in the law, etc., were a daily decision in the system globally. Another one, the minister that, unfortunately, we lost him a few weeks ago, not the same, but Bowne. Yeah, Bowne, he's been also found something similar, in fact, accused for six years in jail. So, I mean, there was, when I was ministered in 2015, I had around 10 or 15 directors that had injustice problems because, in fact, they executed instruction coming from the Pali or coming from ministers, etc., etc. So the idea was to say, if we have any people from the administration that executed orders coming from the system without having personal benefits, we need to make a reconciliation with those people because it's not fair at the end and it's used politically even because justice is not completely now independent, etc. in Tunisia. So that's why we pushed and we went as the factures, of course, to the president, to Capge, and we asked him that this reconciliation law has to cancel the chapter about the business and we keep it just for the administration and that's what was adopted at the end in the parliament. So we will talk about it more in details. Of course, not everyone will agree on this statement. To finish, we are at a kind of turnaround that is very important. We need to avoid to become what you saw maybe in some Latin American country or even less violent places like Sicily is today in politics and the mafia link. So we need really to find corruption at the right one. The people that would use politicians for their own targets and we have it already in Tunisia and we need to fight it and to stop it. So otherwise people won't believe on the fact that really democracy is a good system. With an autocracy, we had corruption and even with democracy, with money, with people that are not clean, we can handle and manage politicians. So this is a turnaround that is very important, especially for the local election in 2019. We need also to accelerate this transitional justice process and to finish it with a clean approach, with a transparent approach without political calculations. We feel that we have it today. We need on the economic side to start to look to the future with more ambition and especially looking to the 2019 on how we will deliver and not what we will do because in Tunisia we know what we must do to transform this country, how we will do it and at which speed we will do it. That's the challenge for the future period. We need a free market, regulated by committed honest political leaders at all levels. That's exactly what we need in Tunisia and effect on us. We are working on it. We start with local addiction and we hope in 2019 it will be really the real target to transform and change Tunisia. Thank you very much. Minister Rahim, thank you very much for the speech. I think you made many of the points that we also made in the paper. It shows that there are issues that need to be urgently addressed in Tunisia. I have with me three distinguished panelists to talk about the paper and to talk about Tunisia in general. I will start with Sheyma Buhlil. Sheyma is the former president of probably Tunisia's most known NGO, Al-Bausala. She left Al-Bausala in 2014 to start and lead Marzad Baladiya, which is an observer that monitors all municipalities across the country. Prior to joining Bausala, Sheyma worked in the microfinance sector and in building the capacity of journalists in post-revolutionary Tunisia. To my right is Dr. Safuan Masri, who in addition to being a friend is executive vice president for global centers and global development for Columbia University. He is the author of the new book, which I highly recommend Tunisia and Arab Anomaly. That's my marketing spiel here. Safuan holds a senior research scholarly appointment at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, SIPA. He's a scholar on education and contemporary geopolitics and society in the Arab world, and his work focuses on understanding the historic post-colonial dynamics among religion, education, society, and politics. And finally to my left, my colleague and co-author, Sara Yerkes, who's a fellow in Carnegie's Middle East program, where her research focuses on Tunisia's political, economic, and security developments, as well as state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa. Sara previously served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, where she covered North Africa. And I will start with you, Sara, maybe to talk and focus on the paper itself. We all mentioned the idea of democratization of corruption in Tunisia. What do we exactly mean by that? And how do we address this problem? The government has taken several laws and mechanisms to fight corruption, and yet these have not been very effective so far. So what do you think Tunisia should do to address this problem? Sure. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us for this. I'm very excited that we are launching this paper today. This idea, I'm glad to hear that this term democratization of corruption is taking off. I think it's a very, very accurate term to describe what we found in researching this paper, which is that the, first of all, the level, the perception of the level of corruption between Ben Ali's time and today has increased in Tunisia. In our own survey that we conducted for this report, we found that 66% of Tunisians believe there's more corruption in Tunisia today than under Ben Ali. Now, whether or not that actual number, there's actually more in dollar amounts, denard amounts, we don't know. But the point is that people feel there's more corruption today. And why is that? One of the reasons is that it has become democratized, meaning that most anyone today in Tunisia can benefit from corruption. So in the Ben Ali era, you had a kleptocracy. You had the idea that you had widespread corruption, petty corruption, but also grand corruption, but it was controlled. There was this mafia-like system that very much kept track of who was benefiting from corruption and made sure it was the family of Ben Ali and his wife. Today, that's not the case, that most of the institutions, most of this sort of mafia-like structure is gone. However, people are still carrying out the same sort of petty corruption. People are still benefiting from bribery, for example, from nepotism. And at the same time, corruption because you had a revolution because there's freedom of speech, freedom of the press now, people can talk about corruption. So you also have the democratization of discussion of corruption, meaning that I think people feel it more simply because they're talking about it more. So part of the report was to dive into this and figure out why do people believe there is more corruption. And as Marwan mentioned, there have been a lot of government initiatives. You can read about them in detail. There's a lovely timeline in the paper that has all the different initiatives. You can see how much the government and civil society have both done to tackle this problem. But I think the main concern that we found is that can you just fighting a two-front battle, which has already been discussed a little bit, this idea that you have the Ben Ali regime and you have corruption that sprung up since the revolution. And trying to figure out how to fight those two things at the same time is crucial. And what we found is that government is mostly addressing the corruption that sprung up since the revolution. Civil society is very interested in the past and reconciling with the Ben Ali regime and making sure the transitional justice process keeps moving forward. So one of our main overarching recommendations is that both of these need to be addressed simultaneously. And civil society and government need to talk to each other. And this is something where both are fighting and doing incredible impressive things. But they're at odds with each other. So hopefully, we'll get into that a little bit more in our discussion today. Thank you, sir. Well, talking about civil society, that's the perfect segue to Shehma. Shehma, what is your view of how the government is handling corruption? And do you think that the next municipal elections will have any positive impact on corruption? Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to take I'm not going to talk about what I think the government is doing. I'm just going to give facts. I know that this government, when it was given the confidence of the of the parliament, it was very committed to fighting corruption. One of the one of the promises was to pass certain laws to which were passed, including the protection of the swivelers and the law that governs the constitutional authority that is or takes care of good governance and fighting corruption, which if I may mention the numbers, none of the fairtunas is numbers of numbers. This is why I want to really talk about numbers. However, there are other laws that were supposed to pass, which is the conflict of interest law, the declaration of asset and the emissive has yet to pass. It was a past of parliament, but absolutely no participatory approach in drafting this. Here I'm stating fact because you mentioned Sarah that there's there seems to be a divide between civil society or the general public and decisions that there were some good or some advances from the government, which is increasing some of the some of the funding for the anti corruption instance or authority. However, we do know that in the 2018 financial act, there is absolutely no money that is assigned to this authority. We do have a government that is very committed to fighting corruption. There are any government official speaking, they do seem to be aligned with what everyone feels. However, in factually, there's nothing that's on paper. Another example is this idea or this obsession with fighting corruption that is not coupled with an obsession with a rule of law. Have a government that's very committed to putting people behind jail, not committed to preventing corruption, for example, reform of the justice system. And here I'm going to give a figure. In Tunisia, we have a very French system judicial system, how they have nourished the court. In a way, it's the justice institution that guarantees the rights of citizen station of the state or the rights of the state in relation to the different public institutions. No money was taken into account in order to reform the administrative court. No money was assigned to the financial toll or any financial crimes. So these are all numbers that are proposed by the government approved by the parliament. As the majority of the coalition or the ruling, these are questions that we need to ask. How are words translated into action? I need to talk about the reconciliation law. It's something that wish we did not need to speak about in post revolutionary Tunisia. Fortunately, the topic that takes the energy and the time and the emotions of so many people on both sides. The agnostic reconciliation law as introduced by the team, it's a law that brought up a lot of controversy. And it's not only because it was proposed by the president of the republic. The caricature is everyone is against this law because you know, everyone in society wants to act like the opposition and anything proposed by the ruling party or the president is something that people are automatically opposed to. But this is unfair, a question of fairness of judgment was brought up. It's unfair because it does not admit that there's a change in the concepts and the understanding of concepts of justice, corruption and transitional justice. And this is a commentary that I have about the report. It's not a question of corruption pre the revolution and corruption that's after the revolution. It's are we willing to admit that if we do not deal with the past, are we able to build something that is solid in the future? We cannot just pretend. And I think this is I don't speak in the name of civil society, but I think this was what was expressed by Elbausola and by different civil society organizations. Can we really say that we'll start from scratch post revolution, we will forget everything that happened and start building for a non corrupt state bearing in mind that previous figures from free revolutionary media are also appearing in the decision making scene. That is a different story, but are we willing to admit that it is impossible to deal with the future and the present without dealing with the past? And I think that is a key question that needs to be dealt with because the way we approach it with corruption are going to be the same way we approach it with education and health and the justice system. So it seems like what we see through facts is that there seems to be a change in concepts before the 2014 election and after the 2014 elections. I'll stop here. I'm sure we're going to have more questions. Thank you very much. Before I go on, let me first acknowledge the presence of Ambassador Faisal Gweir with us. He's a very good friend and a regular guest at Carnegie's events. We're always happy to see you here. So with all the problems that Tunisia faces today and as you all hear, there are many of them. Still, a lot of people in the Arab world and beyond feel that Tunisia has been an anomaly, as Safwan mentions, in the Arab world. They have done things that no other Arab country has done, whether it is in the agreement on a new social contract, among all components of Tunisian society, whether in the exercise of the peaceful transfer of power between the Islamists and secularists, or whether it is in such issues as women's rights where women today enjoy, by far, better legal rights than any other Arab country. So Safwan, when you talk about an anomaly, I'm very interested to understand what exactly do you mean by an anomaly. Does that mean that this is something that is an exception that will not be repeated anywhere in the Arab world? Or does that mean that it is an exception that needs to be duplicated and can it be duplicated? And if you if you can just shed some light on this. Sure. So thank you. First of all, thank you, madam Safwan, for intruding me and thank you all for being here this afternoon. I mean, yes, Tunisia has been a largely successful experience, as Yasin has said, it's fragile. It's a democracy that's quite fragile and that's under a lot of stress, especially on the economic slash corruption front, but also on the security front and in terms of achieving political stability and consolidating the gains of the revolution. This is something that will take time and it's a nonlinear process. But looking at what where Tunisia is today, and the path that it has been on, the fact that it is an anomaly by the sheer factor that it's the only success story to have emerged out of the Arab Spring makes it makes it anomalous. What we're witnessing here today makes it an anomaly. You know, the fact that you have active civil society at the level that is represented by you, Shaima, and by your organization and other organizations that you're familiar with, the fact that you have here representatives of the government in the form of the ambassador, and you have the leader of a new political party. And we're able to have this kind of very frank and transparent conversation and not be subjected to any reasons to sort of, you know, hold back in any of that. I find that anomalous in the Arab world that I am familiar with the conclusion in my book, which really is driven by a quest to understand what is it so special about Tunisia that has allowed it to be on the path that it has been on since the since the revolution started there. And you've mentioned some of those examples where one, you know, the peaceful transitions the Troika coalition, the culture of debate and consensus building that was personified in the national dialogue in 2013. The fact that today we have a democratically elected president that we have, you know, a parliament that is functioning, you know, that we have all of these things. My first question was, how come, you know, what gives, you know, why is Tunisia able to do this and other Arab countries have not been able to? And then secondly, you know, can it serve as a model for the rest of the Arab world? On the first one, I, the two, of course, are very much interrelated, that there are distinguishing factors about Tunisia that are very difficult. And some of them are impossible to replicate. And I would put them into two categories. One is luck factors, environmental factors, you know, Tunisia has benefited greatly from its geographic location from the fact that it has had boundaries that have been shifted over the centuries, the only other Arab country that one can say that about is Egypt, really, that it has been a homogeneous society, 98% Sunni Muslim, so absent the sectarian warfare, it has not suffered from the resource burden of other countries. And it was unimportant to the rest of the world. And that has really happened, you know, it did not get entangled in the Cold War intrigue, it did not get entangled into inter Arab intrigue. And it's detachment physically also from the center of gravity of Arab politics, the poisonous politics of the second half of the 20th century, all of these things helped Tunisia. But I think at least equally importantly is that in Tunisia, there's been a very long history of reform. And that's what I focus on in the book is trying to explain and understand this culture of reformism that really has been going on for a very long time. And so in my book, I really focus on the middle of the 19th century and how Tunisia benefited from the leadership that it had both political leadership as a semi autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, how it benefited from the intellectual and economic trade that it had with Europe during the 19th century, and how it benefited also from intellectual reformers during that time, who interacted a lot with the Renaissance movement, Annahta, that was taking place in Cairo and Beirut and Damascus. But that was far more expansive than that reform movement. The Tunisian reform movement dealt with human rights, you know, in the abolishment of slavery in 1846, 19 years before we did in this country. It had constitutional dimensions associated with it. And it had educational components associated with it. And much of that reform also came from within al-Zaituna mosque. So reform had dimensionality associated with it that dealt with the reform of Islam and the reform of the role of religion in society, the advancement of women's rights, which people in the late 19th century wrote about, you know, Abdul Aziz Ta'albi and others like him, to the reform that came out of Zaituna in the form of Pahar Haddad's treaties on the advancement of the rights of women, the labor union movement also, which was an outgrowth of that intellectual reform movement. So my argument is that by the time Tunisia became independent in 1956, Habib Bergeba, who was a visionary, no question about it, had the road and the path already paved for him. He rode on the shoulders of reformers who had come before him, and he implemented significant reforms, particularly in the areas of women, women's rights, education, and the role of religion in society. And when you combine those factors with the civil society activism that was an outgrowth of the labor union movement, you sort of start to understand why Tunisia has been on the path that has been on and why the things that we have witnessed over the past few years and continue to witness are there, which then leads me, and I finish with this, the conclusion that it cannot serve as a model for the rest of the Arab world. It is an anomaly because those ingredients, some of them are very specific to Tunisia cannot be replicated fine. But those that can be replicated have been brewing and have been evolving over a very long period of time. What I do hope, though, is that to the extent that there's an anomaly, that it can serve as a source of inspiration for the rest of the Arab world. There are very valuable lessons to be learned about the Tunisian experience by Arab populations and Arab nations more broadly, so that perhaps some of those experiences that we see in Tunisia can be replicated elsewhere, but that it would take a very long time. But I also think that many of those valuable lessons are also important for Tunisians themselves. I think Tunisia needs to be cognizant of its history along those path to try to avoid some of the mistakes that have been done in the past. So to link it back to the report, let's not forget that what drove the revolution in Tunisia was the poor economic state and corruption. Corruption not only in the form of kleptocracy, but corruption in terms of how economic data was manipulated. Corruption in terms of how we in the West actually were ineffective in terms of the role that we played in monitoring and ensuring that Tunisia was on the right economic path. Thank you so far for this very thoughtful analysis of what has been going on. I want to go back to Shema and discuss the current government's emphasis on corruption. The government has made it its banner, if you want, slogan. And how do you assess that war on corruption? Is it succeeding? Is the new government better able to address it than the old one? Or are we still in the same? If I may enlarge the scope of the question to not government, not just the executive branch, but also the legislative, I think there is a pressure to deliver results. A pressure that is put on all decision makers, whether parliamentarians, government officials, the president, the justice system. That is a pressure that requires immediate actions. But since we're still in a trend, I mean, we're still in transition, I know everyone wants us to stop being in transition, but that does not stop by stopping music to stop use the word. We need to get past the transition. And that requires establishing institutions. So I cannot talk about the war on corruption without speaking about the establishment of other institutions, such as the constitutional court, such as the election of municipal councils and regional councils. Those might seem like they're not related to fighting corruption, but they are. Because the first step in fighting corruption is to create this accountability environment where if someone witnesses corruption, they can denounce it and actually speak against it, which takes me to an issue that I'm really passionate about, which is decentralization. And it pains me that we couple it with with corruption and we say decentralizing corruption. I think what is happening is your graph, it's becoming more present. But I think the solution for corruption is decentralization. Because the closer you bring decision making to people, the closer those who are responsible for corruption are to people. And the more possibilities for people to hold them accountable. I'll give an example for municipalities. If decisions are really made on a municipal level, when it comes to the public public projects, people know who is actually doing a good job and who isn't. They know if that road is going to break in two weeks' reigns, or if it's going to actually hold for 10 years, as it's supposed to do. And this increases the chance that people actually fight those, the phenomena of corruption. Again, it pains me that the government, the parliament, and the presidency are not really committed to establishing this. We keep on delaying the date of municipal elections. No real commitment to put in place a legal framework that's related to decentralization. There's a whole law that needs to be passed. The election of the constitutional court members is delayed. So how can you be committed to fighting corruption in existing institutions if we're not giving enough attention to non-existing ones that are supposed to create the balance, that are supposed to drive the reform of the justice system, and every other institution? I think the term fighting corruption in itself has to improve. It's exactly like fighting unemployment. We'll fight unemployment forever. We're never going to fight it, but we can improve the economy to generate employment. This might seem like a play on word, but no. It actually changes the whole approach to the problem. In fighting corruption, it seems like civil society at least is put in an equation that is very difficult. It's like fighting terrorism, but giving up human rights. Now it's like fighting corruption, but giving up the right for just trial. This is something that we have noticed with arresting the figures, the extremely corrupt figures, or supposedly, I have no evidence. In the past, earlier this year, criticism came from civil society where if someone is under arrest, they're supposed to have the right to contact a lawyer, for example, and they weren't. They were denied for at least a month. Military courts, we started hearing something like this talk about military court suddenly came to the surface and everyone was extremely alarmed, but then it's like, well, you want us to fight corruption, right? So that we should not face such questions in post-revolutionary Tunisia. The only question is, do we think the government is doing a good job? I think it's doing a good job in bringing discussion about corruption to the table, so in a democratic manner. I think it can do a better job in bringing civil society organizations into the discussion and become more participatory in the discussion of bills that are proposed in assessing the efforts. I think assessment is extremely important. It can do a much better job in allowing real autonomy to the authorities, like fighting the anti-corruption authority. There's a discussion, a very interesting discussion on a philosophical level that is taking place in Tunisia, which is what is the role of different authorities? How do we maintain the power of the state without threatening it by creating independent authorities, like the one that is fighting corruption at the moment and in the future to be the constitutional one? All these discussions are taking place and they will determine the future of the country. It's doing a good job in bringing those discussions to the surface, but it can do a much better job in taking into account the history of the country and the future by involving all actors. That's the diplomatic attack I guess. You're extremely diplomatic for a civil society activist. Sarah Minister Brahim talked about the lack of good delivery and he talked about that Mr. Dibriform, which not many people pay, you know, attention to not just in Tunisia, I think, but all over the Arab world. I mean, we, in many countries, we've created the bloated bureaucracies that are inefficient and that are either unwilling or unable to affect economic reform and affect policies. So I'd like you to comment on that as well as what recommendations would you have for the international community? What, in what ways can it help? I think that this actually ties into what Simon was just talking about, which is trying to bring government to the people. So one of the things that we found in this paper and I found in previous research is this massive gap in trust between people and government in Tunisia and it's growing. And I think that the latest polling on people who intend to vote in the municipal elections might have lean vote. The numbers are low. People who say they're going to vote should these elections happen. I think this reflects this problem, which is part of it is the service delivery idea that people aren't actually getting anything from their government so they don't understand what the government is there for. This goes also to tax collection issues. People aren't paying taxes because they don't understand what the taxes are going for. So one of the things I think you know it is really important that the international community plays a role in funding some of these mechanisms to help increase efficiencies in government to help increase service delivery. One way is through digitization of government services and I think a way to start this would be at the local level to take advantage of the municipal election to start a couple municipalities and maybe expand from there on actually bringing government services directly to the people. When we were at Marwan and I were in Tunis in September I remember I was showing some people this app that we have in Washington. I'm a DC resident. It says DCC 11 app, which is that I can go on if my trash doesn't get picked up I click a button and I say trash didn't get picked up in someone they might not show up but at least I have a way to connect with my government. This is something that I think actually could be very effective and if you could start it at a couple of municipalities and expand it. But this also deals with the idea of corruption and bribery and if you can take away the person if you connect people directly to the service then you remove the incentive you remove that pathway to bribery. Other things the international community can do and I think one thing is just to keep up the funding particularly for the anti-corruption authority. This idea I mean we heard over and over again in our meetings in Tunis that the authority is lacking in financial resources and community resources. So the international community can help fill that gap in funding. But also one thing is to integrate anti-corruption mechanisms into current funding and to security assistance and into economic assistance. That means not necessarily supporting anti-corruption as anti-corruption but supporting it as part of all the other the other international programs that exist already. And then finally I think you know strengthening civil society and we've seen the good work that civil society does. One way is to continue to help spread civil society to the local level. So to help groups that are fighting corruption to help them operate at the local level to reach outside of Tunis. And then also to help with sort of a public education campaign. So we've talked a little bit about the legal framework that exists and there are some with the lower law for example. It's a great law. It's there on paper but most people don't know how to access that. So some sort I think the U.S. and other donors can help civil society create education campaigns that people understand, teachers understand how to access those laws, how to access the justice system, once the constitutional court's in place, how do people know how to actually go there, how to report corruption cases, things like that that you know it doesn't just happen overnight these things become effective. Thank you Sarah. And so far I cannot help but ask you this question. You have quite a bit of experience working on education throughout the airport. What role if any you think can education play in conducting corruption? Oh I think it can play a very very big role. I mean the to pick up on some of the things that Sarah and Shayma have said you know the semantics are important and it's important that we know what we mean when we say we're fighting corruption or we're fighting terrorism. It's important to know sort of you know what underlies all of that. We talked about public education. Sarah I think that that is really very very important. The problems as I saw them you know over the first decade of the century, over the last 10 years of Ben Ali's rule, the eclectocracy, the corruption, but also the unemployment and the economic conditions that were deteriorating very very quickly and especially amongst university graduates and what had happened also under Ben Ali in terms of the deterioration of the state of education. So even though I dedicate good space in my book talking about the wonderful advances in education that Tunisia post-independence was able to implement and how different those were from the education systems of the rest of the Arab world and just to highlight a couple of things the bilingualism, the focus on quality which also meant that French teachers were retained while Tunisian teachers were trained. The fact that universal education was not adopted immediately but gradually the limitation of the role of religion in the curriculum. Co-education also I think played a big role and had something to do also with the advancement of the status of women. You know all of those things were very very positive factors. Perhaps the most important factor from an economic perspective is the fact that vocational training was very much a respected area of education in Tunisia until the early 1990s. Only 50% of primary school graduates in Tunisia qualified for entrance into the Lissé system, into the high school system or the middle school and then the Lissé system. So advanced secondary education and certainly university education was reserved for people who really qualified for that. Whereas the other half pursued vocational training that was a very high quality and that resulted in employability afterwards. You look at great economic models in this world that we live in today. You look at the case of Germany, only one third of Germans have university degrees. It does not mean that the rest are not educated. They're very well educated because they had a good basic education in school and then they were educated in terms of skills acquisition which made them marketable and able to enter the marketplace. Under Ben Ali and again I'll go back to the role of the international institutions and to build off what Sarah has said. We need to be far more clever about how we judge things in a place like Tunisia. I mean I think one of the things that we really messed up in the case of Tunisia is that we accepted statistics that were coming from the Ben Ali regime that were manipulated, that had inequalities. You know we looked at averages so on average GDP growth was healthy in Tunisia. But it was at least twice as strong in Tunis and the coastal area than it was in the middle of the country. Average poverty rates, average unemployment rates looked like they were in sync with other similar developing countries. But in reality they were twice as bad in the interior regions which actually gave birth to the revolution at the end. Similarly in the case of education we imposed the IMF the World Bank and other donor organizations. We imposed structural adjustments on Tunisia in the field of education that pushed the Ben Ali regime to open up the floodgates to schools and universities so that enrollment figures improved. We focused on enrollment figures. We focused on the metrics at the expense of quality. So what happened during that time? First of all it was the introduction of what's called the 25% rule. 25% rule was a disaster. 25% rule meant that your graduation score from high school took into account 75% of your LISSE exam at the end of high school and 25% of your grade was made up from three other exams that you took during the last year of high school that were easier. So it sort of lowered the bar. More and more people were then qualified to enter university. Vocational schools were eliminated. They were only reintroduced in 2010. It's much more difficult for me to be convinced to acquire skills in a vocational school when I'm 19, 20 years old and when all my friends have gone on to university then when I was 13 or 14 years old and I did my past the entrance exam to middle school and high school and I acquired the skill otherwise. There were other things that had been the exam to graduate from primary school was eliminated. So as a result, I mean just to give you a couple of numbers, between the year 1990 and year 2010 school enrollment grew sevenfold. Now remember, this is in a country where again anomalous to the rest of the Arab world fertility rates had been maintained at around two because Tunisia after all eliminated polygamy. Today it's the only Arab Muslim country where polygamy is outlawed and that's been the case since 1956. 1961 Tunisian women had access to birth control. In 1973 they got legal access to abortion the same year as low versus weight the same year as low versus weight in this country. So this is a country that had not been over the past 20 years growing in terms of its population yet school enrollment went up by seven orders of magnitude and the universities between 1987 and 2001 in the university enrollment went up fourfold fourfold. So what you have today are graduates of universities and of high schools not with the same quality of education that their predecessors their parents had with them but nonetheless they hold degrees and they are unemployed. So I think in a part of the one of the things that we need to pay attention to and one of the things that needs to be reformed in Tunisia is the education system the refocus on vocational training the insurance that we are not that there's no inflation in terms of diplomas and in terms of university education as I think currently there is inflation which adds to the frustrations you know when you have university degrees and I've talked to many Tunisian youth who had multiple university degrees but were unemployed that then I think is something that clearly needs to be attended to and it's something that has contributed significantly to the corruption problem indirectly through the unmet economic demand but also directly 70% of Tunisian school students receive some form of tutoring. 54% of those are offered tutoring by their own school teachers. So you have corruption within the education system itself actually the 25% tool was introduced as a result or it was a corrupt practice to enable certain people to be able to enter university when they would not have been qualified to do so. 25% tool has now been eliminated over the past few years one of the accomplishments of the former minister of education in Tunisia but to sum it up I mean you know I think when we talk about the economic conditions when we talk about unemployment when we talk about border security and the informal economy in Tunisia we've got to look at education both in terms of what's being taught how much inflation is there perhaps in the acquisition of university degrees and how we deal with all of this. The good news is the content of what students learn in Tunisia continues to be far superior to what students are taught elsewhere in the Arab world. All right enough of me monopolizing this conversation so let's take three questions at a time I want to ask you to keep it short to address it to the person you want to answer and to try to attach a question mark to the question mark. Yes yes it's coming. So much to say and I have to give this very very brief so for Safon my main question is you attribute Tunisia's anomaly there isn't an anomaly in Tunisia although I would argue there's some anomalous things and a lot of non anomalous things but you attribute it to luck and to culture and what you exclude from that argument is agency to give you many I could think of just two the way in which secular and Islamists negotiated in the 2000s and the whole October 18 movement and another one is what led to the Nobel Prize the Quartet. So how do you build agency into your model particularly as you're looking to inspire the neighboring countries. For Shema the whole issue of youth in Tunisia if the Tunisian government right now did everything you're calling for. I still think most Tunisian youth would be miserable. And so I'm wondering if you could just broaden 13% of Tunisian young people in one poll so they vote in the next election. So I was wondering if you could think about beyond just the topic today what revolutionary dividends big moves the government could make to sort of capture the imagination of young people. And for Sarah there's a lot of creative new thinking on addressing corruption where instead of just passing laws and jailing people you disincentivize corruption. You know the classic example they always give is you know if people are paying a government official to get a paper quicker put in an expedition service where it's a legal expediting fee you can pay more and that you know and then another one would be disincentivizing businesses to act in a corrupt manner through economic incentives built in. What is your thinking having done this report on clever new ways to deal with disincentivizing corruption? Thank you. The lady over there, yes. My name is Samaya. Thank you all for your comments. I have two questions. The first one is about decentralization. So, Shama, do you think there are risks to decentralization meaning great more opportunities for corruption? So basically one person takes money but then the decentralization of money. The second question is for Sara on political apathy. So how do you see, you know you've mentioned that border turnouts for the municipal elections are probably going to be low but then we're still seeing a lot of social protest on the street. So how can we address this challenge of turning this street's opposition to votes? Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Salah Sarhan. I represent the Arab League in Washington. Thank you so much for inviting me today. First time I attended an event in Carnegie. The issue of corruption in Tunisia is kind of striking to me. It strikes me. Tunisia is a bright and shining example when you compare it to the Arab countries. Really it's the first time I had today that there's a corruption in Tunisia. But tell me where is the zero country corruption all over the world? Corruption is everywhere. This is not my comments. The thing is I would like to know what is the aim from this discussion today. Are we sending a kind of alert to the Tunisian government or a message that we look, you gain very good reputation after the spring revolution. If you want to maintain this kind of level you should do that and that and that. I know the government, the Tunisian government, they are progressing well. The latest result is equalization between men and women in some issue like legacy or other rights. Really I'm surprised today. Thank you very much. One more and then we'll allow them. Hi. I'm Amir Sexy from Tunisia. I want to ask one question to Seima and one question to Sara. Seima, what are your thoughts about this rhetoric of victimization of the people of the administration, that they are poor people, that have been forced basically to do whatever the regime wanted them to do and people tend to forget that they were appointed in these positions to serve the regime and that even if they were giving benefits to their son and daughters it will be untraceable legally speaking. One more question is for Sara. What are your thoughts about this rhetoric of political parties effect included that accuse of civil society of sometimes treason and people being funded by foreign money serving external agenda and we saw this these accusations towards Al-Bausala when they were monitoring the cheating of members of the parliament inside and I watch when they were attacking our very corrupt private sector that we don't talk about. Thank you. Seima, you want to stop here. I'm going to start with the third question. I'm surprised the Arab League is surprised. I think I'm not. I'm not sure actually. I think I'm not surprised. It is extremely suffocating to be framed as the beacon of light in the Arab world. Great to say that. I mean, we're extremely proud of what happened in Tunisia. The revolution was really to many people it was they took it to a very personal level. I mean, nothing included. Some people did not imagine a future in the country. Now they do. Which is why it's very easy and comforting for decision makers in Tunisia or outside to say that. It's in comparison to the rest of the Arab world. I mean, how can we compare Tunisia to the rest of the Arab world? I hate to say this. It's an anomaly. We wish that one day we can really say that we want to be like one of the Arab countries. May I interject something on that? It's okay to have some flow going on. But it's amazing. During my research, every time I spoke to Tunisian about education, for example, and I would say my goodness, how advanced your education is compared to the rest of the Arab world, I would get use of Sharif, our mutual friend. He said, it's not as good as it used to be. And I said, give me an example. He said, I didn't really understand Renee Descartes until I got to college. I looked at him and I said hundreds of millions of Arabs have graduated, never even having heard the name Renee Descartes. Yes. You know, he and all of them tell me our standard of comparison is Spain and England and France. Steve Kahl, who runs the School of Journalism, was in Tunisia during the Kasbah protest in 2011, writing for the New Yorker. When he asked protesters what model of democracy do you want to copy, he thought Malaysia, Indonesia, the examples that he got where all western models. So part of the anomaly is that Tunisia is not exclusively Arab. I'm going to be even more arrogant and say we want to set our own standard. It's not even any other country because we understand that it's very different. So not being able to comfortably say this without being attacked of being a traitor and of tarnishing the country's image abroad, not being able to criticize this is a fact, this is a reality that Tunisian civil society is going through, which is to answer the second or the first question about youth. What I was talking about was not the magic solution for people to feel great. This was the minimum for people to be able to envision a life that guarantees their rights, where you know that if someone to view the justice system is actually going to treat you fairly. Where you know that if you open a civil society organization, which is something that everyone boasts about, we need to know that we're always under the risk of changing the regulation to one that actually limits civil society. Tunisia today, one that is very proud to have Al-Bosal and I watch, is also a country that is discussing, passing a law that limits, gaps, international funding for organizations. The fact, I hate to say it, I wish I would not say it, but I'm asked to say the truth, so I won't say that. So for youth, I think what youth need is not the government to respond to their demands, it's for them to have access points to decision making. They need a government that allows them to actually influence decisions, not only respond to them. We are not in a very young government, even though we have a very young, not very young, but we have a young prime minister. So if we're going to wait for youth to actually take a spot in decision making, they wouldn't be young anymore. I think what needs to happen is to allow them to dream. I'll give an example. We have illegal, I don't like to use the word, but immigrants who are actually taking to the sea, they're risking their lives to flee the country. But we have decision makers who are not willing, I'm not, of course I'm generalizing, we have a lot of decision makers who are not willing to admit that this is a problem. We have decision makers who today have the money that you put in order to migrate is enough for you to open a project in Tunisia and create employment. This is a lie. We have decision makers who are not close to the reality on the ground. Again, I wish I was not saying this, but this is a fact. As for decentralization, does it have a risk? Yes, like any public policy, like any political system. The only thing that makes me a huge supporter of decentralization is that centralization has failed. The best way to approach this failure is to try something new. And oh, it's always something new is always better than status quo. The second reason is when you decentralize, you're actually diversifying the risk. So let's say you have corruption. You have 350 minutes of policy. If you diversify or if you decentralize decisions, you're also limiting the amount of money that is spent. So if there is corruption, we're talking about corruption in a smaller amount that is detectable. So once you detect it, you can easily, if you have the will, improve the system in a way that makes it more secure towards corruption. Of course, decentralization is not only holding elections. It is reinforcing the justice system. It's reinforcing the education of people so they can take part in the decision making. It is having local leaders who are actually willing to make decisions. So decentralization is not only elections. If we have all of those things in place, real autonomy, financial and administrative, real control that is not limiting, then, yes, decentralization can be a solution. It's not, but anything that is different from the fiscal is an opportunity. Victimization of the administration. I think you're talking about the reconciliation law. So there's this idea in Tunisia that the 800,000 public servants are feeling threatened and cannot make decisions. For me, it's surprising because I have at least encountered 500 between municipalities, all 350 working ministries, and I was very pleasantly surprised that there were people who were transparent, loved the country and made decisions that were actually good for the country. What is problematic about the reconciliation law is that it's a reconciliation that is supposed to grant amnesty to those who made decisions that were illegal and corrupt under Ben Ali. Actually, starting from Burkiba from 1956 up to 2011 and saying that they were forced to do it. Now, there are two ways to look at this. You can say that those are victims. Those are people who risks, you know, losing their jobs if they had said no. But those are also people who allowed the system to survive because they did not say no. I know so many people who said no to decisions. Then, yes, they were either laid off or they were put in the fridge to use. But those are the people who allowed something like the revolution to take place. We're facing really two options. Either we say that we should basically give a present to those who allow the system to survive, or actually give recognition to those who said no. So the victimization I think is overrated, especially that we have yet to find a number today. There is no official number provided by the presidency of the Republic or the Parliament that gives us an idea about how many public servants are we talking about who are going to actually make use of this reconciliation. Just for me to summarize, we had a bill that was proposed. The only bill proposed by the president of the Republic trying to push for two years from 2015 to 2017 that the coalition, the government and in Parliament pushed for has yet to provide a clear number or figure about who is going to make use of this bill. I think this answers your question. I think what we can do about this is that the justice system has to take the justice has to take its course. This reconciliation gives amnesty but as citizens we are allowed to be opposed to certain decisions if we have information about the acquaintance of those people. I don't know what to tell you about this. So on the question of clever ways to disincentive corruption, so Carnegie we are blessed to have one of the world experts on corruption, Sarah Chase I asked her this give me some examples globally of what are some positive stories of fighting corruption what she said is I don't have any for you but I will say one thing in my research the one really good example where I think a positive story was in the Philippines where they automated the customs sector and I think generally I am sort of a leada myself but I think technology works really well here and that this idea of digitizing processes and automating processes, removing people, removing the ability to even have that corruption take place in the first place but I also think it's not necessarily about creative solutions I think in Tunisia's case you have a good legal framework you have things that are there that need to be enforced and we read about this in the paper but the asset declaration law which was mentioned and that's just one really simple thing you can do which is enforce it make sure like require government officials and parliamentarians to publicly declare their assets every year and update them every year and have that being an online database accessible to the public that builds trust with people and it has the information publicly available out there which kind of goes to this photography question as well you know I think service delivery is a big part of this showing people that government is doing something for them you know and connecting people to the government I think again at the local level it's a lot easier to do than it is at the national level so I'm somewhat optimistic that should there eventually be people that will help connect people to their government and help deal with that in some cases on the NGO law the sort of the push back against I mean it's very troubling the idea it's not a Tunisia problem where you have government sort of using civil society and NGO laws to of treason or terrorism or whatever but I think Tunisia has a step in this fight that you have a very open and free media you have people paying attention and I think that that first of all is the first step and the second step is for the international community to pay attention to this and to fight and again it's not a new problem to Tunisia when I was in the department I dealt with a different country where you have the exact same situation and getting the international community to pay attention and to push back and recognize how essential civil society is to Tunisia I think there will be people on the side of civil society so I know we have to be quick so the gentleman's question you're absolutely correct I mean and I'm sorry if I did not present it properly the cultural and luck factors were sort of background elements that helped but the focus of my argument is on agency and it is on the book because it's really about the education women's civil society and religion and part of the anomaly also you know I go to great lengths to talk about how in Nahdah evolved and how even the political Islam of Tunisia is anomalous from an Arab perspective and Nahdah is not your run of the mill political Islamist party which is no longer considered politically and Islamist party there are anomalies within Tunisia so one of the things that I consider very anomalous and that the minister of justice resigned partially over this issue is it's the only country in the Arab world where you have a constitutional article that guarantees freedom of conscience Article 6 it's the only country in the Arab world where you can be an atheist and not be not be prosecuted but try to be an atheist however which also means you have the right freedom of conscience that's it doesn't have to be explained yet you have a penal code penal code 230 which criminalizes homosexuality but at the same time what is special about Tunisia is that the issue is debated the issue is on the table the unconstitutionality of penal code 230 which I think should be repealed and which many human rights organizations have been pushing for is at least out there talked about in the open just a couple of very quick comments especially with regards to His Excellency Salah's point you know there's an old saying no good deed goes out punished right and you know the harder you you know you work the luckier you get and Tunisia I think has set the bar higher the expectations of Tunisia are high and I bet you that that's not an easy thing for you as a Tunisian to deal with so my standards or the standards by which I look at how corruption is dealt with or anything else is dealt with in Tunisia is not the same standard that I hold for other Arab countries you know I'm sorry about that and finally you're absolutely correct Shayma we cannot move forward if we don't face our history and I think one of the things that you report Marwan and Sahara makes very very clear is that we need to work on both of these things simultaneously we need to strike the right balance because we cannot spend all of our energy dealing with the past we cannot ignore the past also we need to deal with the current corruption and we need to deal with this new problem of corruption right it's new in many many respects but it is you know the my concern is that when we talk about fighting corruption we're often talking about fighting a symptom you know when you fight terrorism you don't go out and annihilate Daesh that's an important part of the task but getting rid of Daesh militarily does not deal with Daeshism as an ideology I think the roots or the factors that have led to this growth and democratization of corruption is what we need to be dealt with and in that that takes us back to creating the proper economic opportunities and balancing the market needs with the skills of the workforce if you allow me my best anecdote in Tunisia that shows how anomalous Tunisia is from the rest of the Arab world is a meeting we had in Tunisia last last year in which there were two members of parliament, a veiled member from a secular man from that Tunis, both members of parliament I asked them the same question in front of maybe 50 people in the room if there is a conflict between the Qur'an and the constitution which do you refer to and not a woman even before Nidah Tunis said look this question is settled in Tunisia when it comes to political issues it's the constitution you will never hear this statement from any other Islamist party in the Arab world so the maturity that they have achieved in terms of understanding the difference between religion and between political you know daily affairs is something that I think no other I'm gonna ask you for one question only one question to each participant because we only have 15 minutes and then I want to allow the ambassador to give closing remarks also so please sir preferably from women I haven't seen many women thank you Marwan for inviting us I heard Minister Brahim gave a list and also Sarah a list of different corruptions being taken place in Tunisia would it be possible to prepare to recommend a calendar of events so that those corruptions could be tackled within a time limit with of course supervision and assistance from Carnegie and other professionals and for Sharma thank you Sharma you have been very direct so you don't have to apologize thank you okay sir no women want to ask a question thank you from the Center for the Study of Islamic Democracy thank you for putting this panel together and for the report I think quick comment about the Tunisians in 2014 did not choose secularist over Islamist I think they chose those who have a big machine and knew how to turn people in and vote for them they voted both for Nida Tunis they had two big blocks and one is secular the other one is Nada as they call themselves and they chose between two secular presidents candidates and they chose one over the other so I think the machine of turning people to vote it makes a big difference so my question is looking forward to 2019 now that corruption is on the minds of you know seeing that this government even though has a big announcement of fighting corruption but from what Shema was describing and Sarah there's not there's a lack of seriousness there's a lack of putting your money where your mouth is appointing seven ministers from the Ben Ali era into this new government that's not serious about fighting corruption and so how can we make sure that corruption is the number one issue in 2019 elections how can we make sure the voices of the youth and those in the interior regions who care about fighting corruption for real how can we get them to really voice their opinion and make a difference in 2019 and not see the same faces again one last question please oh sorry sorry Michelle you want to take one Michelle and then you okay well done from Carnegie my question is for you Shema from my observation one of the big victories of Tunisian civil society was the establishing sort of freedom of information and transparency and sort of kicking down the doors early on after the revolution in order to establish the right of citizens to have information about what government officials are doing what the parliament is doing so forth how do you assess that now how do you assess the progress or lack of progress in developing freedom of information and how that affects civil society's ability to be effective in the fight against corruption my name is Brenna Curdie I'm from the Center for International Private Enterprise I have one and a half questions which I'm hoping you'll let me ask because I'm a woman and you want to live into that question so so my first question Cyp is an organization that really believes in the power of the private sector as a driver and I'm really interested to have noticed that nobody on this panel mentioned the private sector or business one time in the conversation about corruption given Tunisian's history with the private sector given that the private sector has sometimes buried them under a wealth of corruption but then also push them out of constitutional crises I'm really interested to know where you all think the private sector fits in the fight against corruption or the terminology that you would like to use so my second question is about civil society and the NGOs role in doing some of these things that you guys have talked about today so hearing ideas for the optimization of policies or encouraging parliamentarians for financial disclosures I'm really interested to know if you think that's something that the government has to change themselves or if there's a place for civil society and NGOs international or domestic or what pressure on them to do that you know for example the State Department were to sponsor an NGO to do a program where they would encourage I'm really thinking off the top of my head here where they would create a program for parliamentarians to put a seal on their campaign materials that would indicate that they had signed on to some anti-corruption I'm going to disclose all of my financial holdings which would maybe increase their appeal for voters do you think that there's room for those sorts of programs do you think this has to really be government top down or can it be grassroots pressure led two minutes each is it fun you want to start sure I mean I think all of those are great questions and great reminders of the kinds of things that need to be paid attention to I think on the private sector definitely has a huge role to play both in terms of you know fighting the roots of corruption by being active in terms of providing there are kinds of opportunities one of the things I worry about is with the heavy concentration of private sector business in Tunis the dichotomy or the tension between the coast and the interior of the country is an age old problem you know and then the issue of economics and franchisement is an age old problem in 1864 we had the revolts in Kasserine for example what I worry about is that businesses that I have been in contact with a lot of them entrepreneurial and young businesses tend to be very focused on Tunis and less so on the rest of the country there is a sense also by the youth in the interior of the country of elitism that exists in Tunis so they're less willing to try it out in a place like Tunis because they're going to be looked down upon based on where they are coming from so I think this is something that is both at the state level and the cultural level but what I think the business sector the private sector has a huge role to play and again I'm not answering the question directly in terms of corruption because I do think that we solve some of the economic problems that underlie the Tunisian situation today this incentivize corruption you deal with issues at the economic level in the interior and the south of the country there is less of an incentive there is less of an attraction to enter the informal economy and to engage in corrupt activity so I wish that maybe this is something we can discuss further after this because I think the role of organizations like Carnegie can be very very positive in this regard so that's the only one that I think I can comment on you know the rest were more directed on civil society so I left my colleagues beyond those so on 2019 I think one of the things that the parties can do is to have platforms that have real policies and actually come up with ideas of how to address corruption or there could be new parties, there could be parties that really focus on corruption I think that it's become this buzzword this sort of amorphous idea but actually if we want the political system to actually address this we need to take it on seriously on the private sector so we do have some of this in the report we didn't get a chance to talk about it too much today but a reading report but also I would say I think one of the things we talk about is this idea that the private sector has a huge role to play in incentivizing exit options from the informal economy and so particularly we have a whole section on investing in the border regions and why that's really important and I'm not necessarily equating the informal economy with corruption but they are tied together and the private sector can come in and create private sector jobs not just public sector jobs to help address those issues and then on the role of sort of bottom up versus top down I think both have to occur there's definitely a role for civil society and for the international community to play in pushing government but also in resisting government it doesn't have to be they don't have to be fighting against each other I think you know talking about for example automating government services the private sector can be the one who develops the technology that does that and the international community in the private sector can pay for it so I think that their more partnership is best very much for the allowing youth to enter the political market I think this is one of the reasons why municipal elections are the most important elections because in terms of accessibility to the political scene they're the most accessible they don't require lots of money I mean the majority of municipalities in Tunisia require a council that has 12 people so even in terms of number it's very easy to create a list to participate in local elections even though a lot of political parties say they're not ready and they do not want to participate in municipal elections I think those who can be ready are the youth who are independent I'm not against partisan politics but obviously there's a lot of this interest in this kind of politics instead of convincing youth that you need to be part of this or this political party you can convince them to take part of the tools that are existing in representative democracy and among which is the municipal elections freedom of information and the media is really leading in this topic and I think we're doing an excellent job what we can do access to information one of the most revolutionary decrees that were published or passed in Tunisia after the revolution was the Decree 41 which allows access to official documents not information 2016 there was a law that was passed which allows access to information this law basically allows access to everything with the exception of issues that are related to national security and personal information but those are not absolute exceptions you can even challenge those exceptions again I'm going to talk about facts this law also introduces this new committee or commission called the Access to Information Commission it's by the parliament supposed to be in place in the past year it's not in place the government has not programmed any money or budget for this committee for details but this is an example of how the government can show re-permitence we're also part of the OGP the open government partnership which has its risk it's a great thing because it gives the label that this country is committed to open government but it also means we're going at a pace at an international pace which usually we're always over-qualified which can translate into pushed for by civil society the best example I want to give is we used to push for the government to publish budgets in an open format so something that looks like EXAM the government kept us saying that they would get a full grade because they were publishing them in PDF so why should you publish them in Excel the World Bank was okay with it why should we change this this is the risk that comes with international cooperation which I'm going to talk about when we talk about programs how can we collaborate with international and national organizations when it comes to the private sector I think the private sector is part of the problem but also part of the solution so capital is very linked with politics in Trinidad like everywhere else in the world I think the solution is for entrepreneurs to enter the market because the great thing about entrepreneurs is that they're young usually they're very politically aware and conscious and they're not linked to any real political party so they have nothing to lose they have a lot to gain if they push for good practice because usually they are they they face a lot of the problems that citizens in all of the other sectors face injustice and getting permits and imports and what not so they have they have a lot to take so they would push for a change however when it comes to the Nobel Peace Prize I went to the quartet which was the one kind of the public sector which is more the traditional too big to fail private sector I think it's very interesting to raise questions about that programs are great investing in civil society is excellent however it comes with its risks I have seen and witnessed in the Tunisian parliament how certain partnerships can actually push for marginalization of Tunisian civil society for example pushing for best practices that worked in a lot of countries in the world but do not necessarily respond to practices in Tunisia I was told as president that we're lucky that we don't need to submit our speeches to the bureau of the parliament before having a hearing in parliament so you know the low hanging fruits you should be very happy that the parliament is open while what we were requesting was an automatic way to request hearings and to enter parliament so it comes with a risk I think the best thing is to make sure that the Tunisian counterpart can actually negotiate those partnerships not to risk or to threaten the existing positive elements that we have thank you so much I want to first thank the three panelists for an excellent discussion on the issue and I want to invite the ambassador of Tunisia to give us closing remarks Ambassador Queia has been a diplomat in several capacities in Washington before he became ambassador and also served Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ambassador Thank you very much Marwan, Mr. Rahim Safwan, Sarah Shayma Ambassador Sahan, welcome big support from the Arab League Ladies and gentlemen thank you very much Carnegie for inviting us and for organizing this panel on Tunisia as usual and I would like to thank and express my appreciation and gratitude for Carnegie for the Tunisia Monitor project really it is putting Tunisia on the map discussing real issues and very issues about Tunisia and actually as a nascent democracy we are open to very good and instructive informative discussions like this one so I've been listening very carefully to all what has been said and of course I'll read the report more than once because it is important to understand what is what is said but also what are the recommendations that's what we need a reality we know and as Mr. Rahim said we know the reality of the country we know what's going on in the country we know all the problems related to corruption in the country and one of the reasons that I don't want to say the main reason the 2011 revolution was corruption because it was spread out all over the country and it took a magnitude that was not tolerated cannot be tolerated anymore I serve usually as a diplomat when I serve abroad I was in so many capitals and when I land in Tunisia the first thing I hear from one is how much corruption is spread out you talk Marwan about and the panel also talked about democratization of the phenomenon yes indeed it is a new phenomenon but also we have to talk about the democratization of dealing with the issue now everybody in Tunisia is very supportive of any initiative to stop the phenomenon and to deal with the phenomenon and to find out solution for the problem because it's not tolerated anymore now that the country is open that the country is democratized that we have a vibrant and very dynamic civil society the issue is not tolerated anymore and sooner or later solution will be defined to the problem we are sometimes in hurry and asking maybe this government or the previous government or even the future government to do more and to accelerate the process it's not an easy process it is a complicated complex process and a long run process since it relies to different stakeholders on the deep reforms and on the mind's development repudiating the culture of impunity this is very important now these phenomenon of impunity in Tunisia is over everyone knows now that once you get into corruption you have to face the justice because everybody is watching now everybody in fact therefore measuring the success of the failure of this process should not be impulsive nor based on perceptions I would like here to quote Daniel Kaufman president and CEO of natural resource governance institute who said fighting corruption is not talking about Tunisia fighting corruption requires a new understanding of how the global problem has evolved global problem has evolved merely adopting a new anti-corruption law creating another commission or launching another campaign will not get the job done we can no longer fight corruption by simply fighting corruption alone corruption is a symptom of a large disease the failure of institutions and governance and it is also inherited inherited this from the past it's not the result of the government that came right after the revolution corruption is a symptom of a large disease the failure of institutions and governments to do a management of revenues and resources and absence of delivery of public goods and services it means that the problem first is global and it is also urgent and important for any society and for any democracy to tackle the problem and to find out solutions and that's what this government was doing when the Prime Minister when the Prime Minister visited Washington last July we had a private dinner and the CEO President CEO of Gallup had dinner with us and he said Mr. Prime Minister I have seen some figures and I'm not sure that they are right or not and they would like to ask directly a question is it true that your popularity now in Tunisia is 73% he said yes it's true but if you asked me this question few months ago I would say it's only 37% but because he took the responsibility and the initiative to fight corruption and he started so many other governments that he didn't do unfortunately during the last few days so all stockholders but also people from all over the regions and all over the ages just supported the government and it was a full support from everyone because everyone feels that we should start one day and hopefully this government this head of government took the responsibility and took his responsibility in two hands as we say and he started the process as I said earlier which is long and difficult one second second characteristic of this strategy needs a whole of society roadmap where not only the government's responsibility are involved with the use of a whole range of other actors starting from the judiciary and it was said in this panel the parliament the political parties the civil society the media and ending I don't know if it is ending or starting I'm not sure by the citizens themselves this is the responsibility of everyone in the country and it is believable now that people using these smart phones or these gadgets now are filming or taking pictures or registering any movement sometimes for people asking for a library so the phenomenon now became popular and as I said is democratized now also fighting corruption should be democratized every single stockholders has a crucial role in the process even when it comes to handling the past or what the report calls the short term version of counting corruption third it is a challenging and painful process that supposes push back and resistance of course we it was said here in this podium that of course many forces many resistance forces will not allow the phenomenon to go forward but it is our responsibility the responsibility of all stockholders also to resist to this resistance because if you fail to fight the phenomenon the phenomenon will be really generalized and you cannot do anything about it it is a challenging and painful process that supposes push back and resistance therefore it is important to be prepared to counter the bad actors actions and maneuvers it is finally a learning process for all stockholders indeed Tunisia is leading a deep move in the region by implementing new concepts inclusive governance transparency social contract and accountability for that purpose it should rely on other countries experiences and best practices adapted to our reality system and priorities to address these challenges and complex issue Tunisia deserves multi-dimensional support and a set of tools in the following first, empowering all the stockholders mainly the official anti-corruption bodies I think this government is serious about that relevant society organization but also the government itself and the public administration of course this requires human and financial resources capacity building and technical assistance second, consolidating the trust and Sarah you mentioned this more than once in your presentation consolidating the trust between all the stockholders and building sustainable framework and channels of dialogue and partnership between them is very important we have good news anyway as rightly reported by Carnegie page 24 I quote civil society has played a crucial role in informing the official anti-corruption process several anti-corruption laws were drafted in consultation with domestic civil society groups and international organizations Sershokhe Tbib the chairperson of the national anti-corruption authority noted that one of the first steps to took was to forge a coalition with civil society formalized with a signed document it's important the civil society is involved of course there are some weaknesses but we are working on that not only the government but also the civil society itself by being every day asking for better and more and that's the role actually of the civil society is to have more coordinated efforts joint planning and integration and quote this endeavor needs to be framed and encouraged in order to create a real synergy between all relevant actors this can't happen in an atmosphere of mistrust and mutual accusations third strategic patients strategic patients means it doesn't mean absence of criticism or scrutiny on the opposite this should encourage all stockholders including the international community to remain committed to seize the momentum build on the existing positive signals and political will to move forward to overcome setbacks engagement in good governance a successful experience the Tunisian model can be inspiring for other countries when new social contracts are in the making to end with a positive note I may say that in Tunisia we have all the ingredients to succeed the entire corruption strategy and policy among these ingredients I can mention the comprehensive legal framework the right institutions and the good will of all actors all we need is trust support and collective commitment thank you very much for your attention thank you very much Minister Brahim, Ambassador Sheema, Saharan, Saffan thank you all for a very lively discussion thank you all for coming on