(quote_box_left) Through his book “Testimony for history”, published in 2011, Ahmed Mestiri, 89 years old, the politician who was part of the first government formed by Habib Bourguiba, engages in the exercise of a right of inventory of Burgundian where certain questions of great news. (/quote_box_left) illustrates)
The author, member of the political party of the Socialist Party Destourien
Ahmed Mestiri, first Minister of Justice, he will then be entrusted with other portfolios such as those of finances, trade, national defense or the interior.
A member of the political bureau of the Socialist Party Destourien, Ahmed Mestiri will be excluded for his criticisms against the regime and the political and economic situation of the country.
As early as 1978, under the banner of the movement of socialist democrats he founded, Ahmed Mestiri continues to denounce fraud. He will be arrested and then set aside in 1986 before voluntarily ended any political activity in 1989.
Ahmed Mestiri whose name was mentioned last year, during the national dialogue to replace Ali Laârayedh, as Prime Minister, gives us his memoirs …
Testimony for a rewriting of the history of Tunisia
The preamble to the work is enticing: “After mature reflections and some hesitations, due to the particular circumstances which surrounded my premature retirement from political life at the end of the last century (…) I resolved finally, before it was too late to sacrifice the tradition of” Memoirs “. (…) To publish them posthumously (…) when the economic situation is favorable. ” Something of a perfume of the 17th century, brings back to Saint Simon, to the great memorialists, to the secrets of the unveiled gods, below the revealed cards, an invitation to penetrate the alcoves and the boudoirs where the decisions are made.
It is not the case, Mr. Mestiri does not burst anyone from a spiritual verve, updates no unshavable motivation and does not open the behind the scenes. These memories are of extreme loyalty and correction. The disappointed reader may incriminate the insincerity of an early publication, it is undoubtedly to be wrong. Published in 2011 “Testimony for history” illustrates certain questions of great topicality.
Divided into three main sequences, the training of the author and his contribution to the national liberation struggle, his participation in affairs and the construction of Tunisia, his activities within the opposition until 1992, these memories retrace half a century of Tunisian history. No clear break, however, structures the story, the developments and reversals are always gradual, preceded by many warning signs, they impose themselves retrospectively as natural, after a slow maturation.
It is with this same measure that Mr. Mestiri engages in the exercise of a right of inventory of Burgundian. Two or three painful episodes concerning the supreme fighter are certainly reported, but that is not the object of his story.
(quote_box_left) It is first of all a question of responding to a story “(…) rewritten, taught in schools, colleges and faculties with the distorting prism which had reduced it to a legend, that of a man who had attributed himself the only merit and the exclusivity of the struggle for independence (…)” In response the author proposes the portrait of a “generals of 20 years” solid, French universalism, ambition and an appetite for life, uniting their energies, their capacities and their creativity for the same purpose. (/quote_box_left)
In the same sense he affirms the primary of conditions and social agents on the individual, insisting for example on the importance of Youssefism as a factor of persuasion determining the colonial authorities to recognize in Bourguiba a relevant interlocutor and to accept to hasten independence.
Testimony of an inheritance
The people, as for him, remain an absent subject, or at least discreet in the first two parts of the book and their portrait is never really sketched, they accompany, supports or opposes by unexpected upheavals more like an ancient choir than that of an actor; He participates in factors and conditions.
It is a book which proceeds more by silences, elisions, than by placing flat. Significantly, the portrait of Bourguiba was only made until the end of the work, retrospectively in the narrative and first, in the negative, by dismissing the values which he could not embody to finally attribute to him integrity, pragmatism, modernism, the priority recognized for teaching in the choice of public investments, a balanced policy in international relations.
The author’s ideological portrait that the Memoirs delivers is interesting, perhaps representative of a generation and revealing of an inheritance. Panabism is involved there, universalism, a kind of concordism, of the will to revive Islamic civilization by reopping the doors of IJTIHAD (in particular for the development of the personal status code), a lexical field tinged with Marxism with, for example, the recurring use of the expression “objective” and a strong sense of the State.
Placing this alliance under the leadership of pragmatism would be sacrificed to language and thought ease. On several occasions the author affirms the need to submit very concrete interests to the realization of ideas. This is the case for example concerning the dropout of the dinar of the franc zone about which the writing writes that “(…) Economic interests passed in the background compared to the objective of recovery of the attributes of our sovereignty.” Likewise pragmatism is not compatible with voluntarism affirmed by Mr. Mestiri affirming “I believe that one can make the revolution by law. »»
These ambiguities are never lifted during the book, attachment to a third way, to non-alignment, which have seen the Arab world knowing a political and cultural apogee? Or strategic misunderstanding, legacy maintained for fear of the worst and for lack of better?
During his career, however, the author’s positions are cleared: the rule of law, democracy, the fundamental civil and political rights of man are not compatible with the regime with single party, they require pluralism. In its last part dealing with the constitution of an opposition, the work becomes more moving, the people and the various social agents take on importance.
Finally, the author questions the question of courage in politics, that of the opportune historical moment and, breaking with all heroic tradition reaffirms man as the primary end of all political action.
Lorand Revault
