February 14, 2014
Many
significant things are taking place around the Arab world these days, some
violent, some peaceful, some within one country, and some across several
different countries. History will look back on these days and record a variety
of noteworthy episodes, whether about Syrian war and negotiations,
Salafist-takfiri networks across the Levant, Palestinian-Israeli negotiations,
continued military dominance in Egypt, and slow transitions in Libya and Yemen.
The most important and truly historic recent event, though, must be the passage
of the new constitution some two weeks ago by Tunisia’s National Constituent
Assembly.
This
marks a moment of profound significance for the entire Arab world, because it
is the first time in modern or ancient history that the ordinary citizens of an
Arab society agree on the substance of their constitution through a
consultative process that achieves a credible national consensus after
significant debate and compromise. Tunisia was the first Arab country ever to
draft its own constitution—the qanoon al-dawla al-tunisiyya, or “law of the
Tunisian state”—which came into force in 1861, and fittingly it is now the
first Arab country to draw up a really meaningful and legitimate constitution
after a popular revolution that removed a long-serving autocratic government.
I have
always felt that if the Arab world experienced just one country with a
credible, homegrown pluralistic democracy, then other Arab societies would seek
to emulate this historic leap forward. Well, thanks to Tunisia and its heroic
people, we now have that one Arab constitutional democracy that is being born,
after a messy and erratic process. The elected representatives of Tunisia’s
National Constituent Assembly needed two years and three months to complete
their work. Three drafts were needed to reach this culminating moment of
consensus, and the road was marked by intense arguments and compromises on
almost every conceivable issue of public or private concern.
Precisely
because the assembly members and many interested Tunisians debated every draft
word by word, the final approved version enjoys popular legitimacy, which is
unprecedented in the Arab world. Beyond this, the document is historic also
because it encapsulates a national consensus on the most important and contentious
issues that define the identity and spirit of Arab societies – Arabism, Islam,
gender, civil-military roles, individual rights, minorities, separation of
powers, and other such big sticker items that had never before been seriously
and credibly debated by Arab publics.
The
letter and spirit of the constitution will continue to be discussed for many
years, as should be the case with any such document that plays at least four
critical and foundational roles in any society:
• It
reflects the core values of the citizenry;
• It
affirms their collective identity;
• It lays
out the framework of governance that includes both the exercise and the limits
of public power; and,
• It
affirms the equal rights of all individual citizens while providing mechanisms
to guarantee that those rights are enjoyed and protected.
No other
constitution in Western democracies, even pioneers like the United States,
France and Switzerland, was as ambitious as this Tunisian constitution in
insisting to agree from the start on the equal rights and common values and
identities of all citizens—rather than waiting a century or more to give women
and minorities equal voting and other civil rights. The Tunisian constitution
calls for parity for women in elected public bodies, for example, while also
affirming universal freedoms and rights for all citizens, which no Western
democracy did at a similar stage of its constitutionalism.
Some
blurred areas allow several articles of the constitution to respond to issues
of profound concern to different groups of Tunisians. So the document notes
that, “Tunisia is a free, independent and sovereign state, Islam is her
religion, Arabic her language and republic her regime,” but also that, “Tunisia
is a state of civil character, based on citizenship, the will of the people and
the primacy of law.”
The
document carefully leaves space in the national tent for Tunisians who are
neither Arab nor Muslim, such as its Amazigh or Jewish citizens, while also
affirming the majority Arab-Islamic identity of society, and blurring the
relationship between religion and the rule of law. Such wording matters because
it emerged from years of intense debate that finally achieved a consensus of
all parties. Much remains to be done in Tunisia, to put this document and its
principles into practice, and also to get on with improving the socio-economic
conditions of citizens whose material lives have stagnated in the last three
years.
For now,
though, we in the Arab world should salute and thank Tunis and its citizens for
their great achievement. We must follow in their path, and muster the common
sense and courage to follow them into that alluring yet—for most Arabs—still
elusive world of sensible statehood that is anchored in the rule of law,
citizenship, good governance and the glue of credible constitutionalism that
binds them together.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large
of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy
and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut,
Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright
© 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global