Since repression fell upon the democratic opposition, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists, and civil society organizations, calls for unity have multiplied.

Since 2023, these calls have taken various forms: platforms, pacts, coalitions, networks, and joint appeals. All shared the same objective: rebuilding a united front against authoritarian drift, reclaiming a collective voice, and resisting fear.

Yet it must be acknowledged that these initiatives, often courageous, have failed to alter the balance of power.

The regime continues its suffocating grip, while a weary and disillusioned population looks elsewhere. Support remains weak, distrust immense, and exhaustion palpable.

THE CURRENT DEADLOCK: BEYOND REPRESSION

Repression explains much, but not everything.

Behind arrests, unfair trials, and fear lie deeper causes: division, the burden of the past, and the inability to build a shared vision.

Ideological, generational, and social fractures persist. Personal rivalries, bureaucratic logic, and the temptation of exclusivity or moral monopoly over democracy continue to obstruct any attempt at unity.

This reality is not merely political; it is structural, cultural, and psychological.

This is what we call here the virus of dictatorship: a slow, invisible illness that survives the fall of the tyrant and continues to inhabit even those who claim to fight it.

WHY HAVE WE FAILED?

Before attempting to rebuild a democratic alternative, we must have the courage to say: we failed.

The democratic transition, once celebrated as an exception in the Arab world, slowly eroded under the weight of fear, exhaustion, resignation, and the loss of collective meaning.

Dictatorship alone did not destroy it; our own shortcomings, illusions, and silences also played a role.

1. A Political and Institutional Failure

The institutions born after 2011 were fragile from the very beginning.

The historic compromise of 2014, meant to consolidate the transition, was experienced more as a truce between rivals than as a founding pact.

Political parties governed without direction, obsessed with elections and preserving their internal balances.

Management replaced vision.

Meanwhile, the state itself remained unchanged: the same centralizing reflexes, the same structures, the same elites.

There was no real reform of the judiciary, the police, or the administration.

Behind the constitutional façade, the authoritarian system was never dismantled — it merely changed its face.

2. A Social and Economic Failure

The revolution’s cry — work, freedom, dignity — turned into disappointment.

Freedom survived for a few years, but work and dignity nearly disappeared.

The Tunisian economy remained trapped in an unequal and dependent model based on rent-seeking and debt.

Political and trade union elites managed the crisis instead of rethinking it fundamentally.

Promises of social justice were sacrificed on the altar of stability and compromise.

As a result, democracy came to be seen as a system without results — an unnecessary luxury for those struggling to survive.

For many, it became synonymous with disorder, corruption, and impotence.

3. A Cultural and Psychological Failure: The Virus of Dictatorship

Here lies the heart of the problem.

Dictatorships do not merely repress; they shape minds, colonize imaginations, and install lasting reflexes.

They teach citizens to fear disagreement, depend on the leader, and distrust difference.

These reflexes, inherited from decades of authoritarian rule, survived the dictator’s fall.

They can be found in parties, associations, trade unions, media — and even within the opposition itself.

The democratic transition did not re-educate our mentalities; it merely shifted the center of power without transforming political culture.

Thus democracy functioned without democrats, and pluralism without a culture of pluralism.

Debate was experienced as war rather than dialogue.

4. A Collective Failure: Fear of Disagreement

After 2011, Tunisia never succeeded in building a free, horizontal, and inclusive space for discussion.

The national dialogues, often praised as models, actually reproduced old hierarchies: elite negotiations, top-down agreements, and the exclusion of ordinary citizens.

Democratic actors locked themselves into silos:
parties against associations, youth against elders, Islamists against secularists, modernists against conservatives.

Everyone wanted to be right alone.

No one accepted losing a little so that the country could gain a lot.

Democracy is not merely elections; it is a culture of compromise, patience, and shared responsibility — a culture we never truly succeeded in establishing.

5. A Moral Failure: The Inability to Mourn

Finally, the transition failed because it never truly confronted its past.

Transitional justice was diverted from its purpose and reduced to partisan conflict.

The wounds of dictatorship remained open, and humiliations went unpunished.

We never mourned fear, nor complicity.

Without critical memory, there can be no conscious citizenship.

Forgetfulness replaced reconciliation; resentment replaced recognition.

THE INVISIBLE LEGACY OF AUTHORITARIANISM: THE DICTATORSHIP WITHIN US

Dictatorship does not merely crush freedoms; it corrupts consciences.

It does not only kill public debate; it poisons our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with power.

Its influence does not end with the fall of the tyrant; it survives in gestures, reflexes, and imaginations — even within the discourse of its opponents.

This is its most insidious nature:
dictatorship leaves behind a slow infection, a set of behaviors, fears, and domination reflexes that contaminate society as a whole, including those who claim to be free.

1. A Political and Moral Pathology

Dictatorship is not merely a political regime; it is a culture of vertical relationships.

It instills the idea that legitimacy comes from above, that the leader knows best, decides best, and speaks in the name of all.

It teaches obedience before understanding, fear before thinking, submission instead of dialogue.

And even when it collapses, it leaves behind generations accustomed to living under tutelage, sometimes searching for a new master.

One does not escape dictatorship simply by overthrowing it; one escapes it by unlearning it.

2. The Tunisian Legacy: A Triple Imprint

In Tunisia, this virus is rooted in a long history predating independence and reinforced through successive layers since 1956:

• Bourguibism built the modern state, but at the cost of a cult of personality and absolute centralization.
• Benalism transformed that model into a police system based on surveillance and obedience.
• Saiedism today pushes this logic to its extreme: rejection of parties, distrust of institutions, and the cult of an abstract people embodied by a solitary leader claiming exclusive representation.

Thus Tunisia lives within the continuity of the same authoritarian thread, which has shaped the national psyche.

3. A Contaminated Opposition

Most worrying is that this infection has spread to those who claim to represent change.

Among many opponents, the language of freedom remains trapped in the same authoritarian imagination:

every leader wants to be a providential savior,
every party revolves around a name more than an idea,
and every internal criticism becomes an offense.

Pluralism is perceived as danger; disagreement as moral failure.

It is no longer only the state that is vertical — the entire political culture is.

4. The Mutations of the Virus

The virus of dictatorship mutates like any resistant organism.

Its forms include:

• Imaginary substitution: replacing action with rhetorical victories.
• Blind anger: seeing enemies everywhere.
• Sacred ego: intolerance toward criticism and contradiction.

All are symptoms of the same disease:
the inability to experience disagreement as enrichment.

5. A Collective Contagion

This virus is not unique to Tunisia.

It can be found in Egypt, Russia, Algeria, and Latin America.

Everywhere democratic transitions fail, the same phenomenon appears:
yesterday’s opponents become the psychological heirs of the regimes they once fought.

6. The Human Cost of the Virus

This illness is not abstract; it destroys human relationships.

It transforms politics into a narcissistic arena,
activism into a competition of egos,
and debate into clan warfare.

Trust erodes, solidarity dies, and fraternity is replaced by suspicion.

7. Healing: Unlearning Dictatorship

The only antidote to the authoritarian virus is democratic re-education.

This is not merely about institutional reform, but about a profound transformation of mentalities.

We must relearn:
how to debate without insulting,
how to cooperate without submitting,
and how to lead without dominating.

Democracy is not a spectacle; it is a school of patience and shared responsibility.

It is not decreed; it is practiced, corrected, and built day after day.

Relearning How to Speak – A Political and Moral Therapy

Faced with this diagnosis, the answer is not yet another manifesto or opportunistic coalition.

What is needed is collective therapy:
a return to dialogue,
humility,
and mutual recognition.

An open, horizontal, and pluralistic space inspired by the Higher Authority for the Achievement of the Revolution’s Objectives:
a place to debate without preconditions, without leaders, and without insults.

Not a front or an alliance, but a democratic laboratory where differences become resources rather than fractures.

Conclusion

Tunisia’s young democracy was not destroyed solely by its enemies, but also by its own fragilities:

• Weak institutions and disconnected elites;
• An unequal and unjust economy;
• An authoritarian political culture marked by fear of disagreement;
• The absence of meaningful work on memory and collective reflection.

Healing from the virus of dictatorship begins by acknowledging our mistakes, then relearning how to speak together — without ego, without leaders, and without exclusion.

The true democratic alternative will emerge neither from anger nor resentment, but from a culture of dialogue, trust, and respect.

It is there, in this collective re-education of our mentalities, that Tunisia’s true rebirth will begin.