Episode 1 – We get into debt, so we are
It seems that Tunisia is doing better. The Minister of Finance said it last Thursday, in front of captivated — or resigned — deputies, we no longer know. After all, it’s not every day that we learn that a bankrupt country is going shopping on the international financial market. A loan of 400 million euros, or 1.4 billion dinars. A trifle. A straw. One more debt for the collection.
But be careful, the minister tells us, it will be on our conditions. Just that. The country that can no longer pay for its wheat imports will dictate its rules to the world market. Wall Street is shaking, the World Bank is sweating, the IMF is biting its fingers. Tunisia arrives, sovereign and dignified, to tell investors: “ We borrow from you, but we set the conditions. » We think we’re dreaming.
Meanwhile, the president continues his favorite refrain: “ Let’s count on ourselves! » Yes, but with other people’s money. A little financial schizophrenia of which he has the secret. He despises loans, except when they fall from the sky, without conditions, without reforms, without questions. Which, in the language of international institutions, is called a utopia.
And since self-sufficiency is in fashion, we are creating community societies, we are recruiting with all our might, we are increasing the number of promises of public employment. All this financed on credit, obviously. The State lives like a rent-free rentier, distributes what it does not have, and leaves the bill to future generations.
As for the IMF, we shun it. Too intrusive, too demanding. He wants structural reforms, the cad. So we prefer to borrow elsewhere, at higher rates, but without being asked to count our money.
The minister promises a “measured” return on the markets. In Tunisia, everything is measured: growth, transparency, credibility. Only debt escapes the rule. She continues to grow, majestic and free.
The country is becoming poorer, but with dignity. He no longer produces much, but he borrows with panache. We go into debt, therefore we are.
Tunisia may be ruined, but, rest assured, it remains immensely rich… in credits.
Episode 2 – No Doing What I Do Myself
The Tunisian government has found its new toy: associations. He accuses them of all evils – foreign interference, conspiracy, subversion, money laundering, witchcraft – anything goes. It looks like a Netflix series produced by the presidency: Kaïs and the evil NGOs.
The scenario is simple: the associations receive foreign donations, therefore they betray the homeland. And since anything that moves without official authorization is suspicious, we close it, we freeze it, we take it to court. Last week, it was the ATFD which was suspended. This week, it’s FTDES and Nawaat. In the coming weeks, we expect I Watch, Al Khatt, Al Qatiba and around fifty NGOs with good press among civil society, the press and citizens.
But here it is: there is a small problem in this moral crusade.
The regime, which has concentrated all powers for four years, has not changed the law on foreign financing. In other words, what he denounces is… perfectly legal. He brandishes sovereignty like a cudgel, while leaving the text open to all the soft underbellies of logic. Result: the associations do what the law allows, and the State pretends to discover the scam.
The best part is that this same State, so quick to scream against money coming from elsewhere, literally lives thanks to it.
The same institutions that finance demonized NGOs — World Bank, AFD, AfDB, Afreximbank — are those that drive the national budget.
We demonize Soros on Monday and sign a loan with Washington on Tuesday.
We condemn donations for “attacking sovereignty”, then we borrow at 8% interest to finance salaries.
It’s schizophrenia in public policy, stamped Made in Carthage.
And because disaster never comes alone, this paranoia has contaminated the banking system.
The banks block everything: transfers, donations, payments, up to 200 euros sent by a German customer to a graphic designer in La Marsa.
We have to prove that he’s not a cousin.
SMEs are dying of slowness, artisans are throwing in the towel, and Tunisia is discovering that by closing the taps, it has also cut off drinking water from its economy.
The authorities wanted to track money laundering. He ended up leaching confidence.
There is only one thing missing from this regime: giving us permission to exist.
Episode 3 – His Highness Morality
Prince Andrew, younger brother of King Charles III, has definitely fallen from grace. Implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein affair, he admitted, half-heartedly, to having maintained dubious relations with the American paedocriminal financier. He was accused of having had, on several occasions, forced sexual relations with Virginia Giuffre, then a minor and under the influence of Epstein. To avoid a high-profile trial in New York, Andrew preferred to sign a check for several million dollars.
The case resurfaced after the publication this week of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl, who committed suicide last April. His testimony, without detour, reopened the wound that Buckingham wanted to believe was closed. And Charles, in a burst of late virtue, saw fit to sacrifice a brother to save the dynasty.
This October 30, the royal sentence fell. King Charles III announced that a “formal process” was underway to strip his brother of all his titles and honors. Andrew will no longer be “His Royal Highness the Duke of York”, but simply Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. He will also have to leave his luxury residence at the Royal Lodge to settle down, more modestly, in Sandringham – that is to say 180 kilometers from London, in another royal property. In short, exile in a Rolls-Royce.
A sanction? More like a caress.
In any democratic country, a citizen accused of such acts would have ended up between four gray walls, not four gilded woodwork. But in the United Kingdom, justice knows how to curtsy to highnesses. She punishes gently, with the tips of her gloves, so as not to wrinkle the blue Windsor silk.
King Charles III congratulates himself on having “protected the dignity of the Crown”. In reality, he protects it like you protect an inheritance: you clean the facade, you keep the keys. Monarchical honor comes down to a well-oiled communications operation. We don’t wash whiter, we repaint in beige.
The press applauds, the diplomats salute “the rigor of the sovereign”, and the Giuffre family, exhausted, speaks of justice. But what justice? The one where a guilty prince buys his redemption, while an untitled citizen languishes for much less?
In the Andrew affair, the monarchy did not lose a prince. She has lost her decency.
Episode 4 – Justice, this endangered species
Last week, I told you about Donald Trump who was sending his missiles into the open sea to pulverize drug traffickers – a simple, effective, and above all clean method: no trials, no judges, no accountability. This week, we’re heading to Brazil, where the governor of Rio has found the South American version of the Trumpian magic formula: we don’t bomb, we shoot the drug dealers in their homes. Result: 120 deaths. The largest police massacre in the country’s history.
In the early morning of October 28, two helicopters, 32 armored vehicles, 2,500 police officers, and a few tons of testosterone invaded the favelas of Alemao and Penha. Official objective: neutralize the leaders of Comando Vermelho. Real objective: to prove that we govern with our muscles. Governor Claudio Castro, Bolsonaro’s political heir, congratulated his troops: “ hard blow for crime ».
A hard blow especially for the residents: bodies spread out in the streets, mothers cleaning the blood of their sons, families waiting in front of the morgues. Brazil has found its expeditious justice: we shoot first, we classify later.
While the United Nations “expresses its horror” – a diplomatic formula for saying “we are dismayed but we will do nothing” – the governor smiles in front of the cameras. He calls it the war on crime. A war without prisoners, without judges, without defense. In short: a war against justice itself.
But the morality is universal: from Washington to Rio, via Tunis and London, everyone has their own little vendetta against the law. Trump wanted the sea as his cemetery, Castro preferred the alleys of Rio. In Tunisia, associations are closed in the name of sovereignty. And in London, they depose a prince instead of judging him, because in the West too, royal dignity is worth a dismissal.
Same scenario, three continents, a single common thread: the law is nothing more than an accessory, which we put on or throw away depending on the costume of the day.
Dictators circumvent it, democracies disguise it, kings disguise it. Everywhere, justice is no longer an ideal, but an alibi.
We are definitely living in a magnificent era: the powerful kill, kings are cleared, regimes suffocate and everyone, in their own way, invents their version of the perfect crime.
