$Unique_ID{COW03725} $Pretitle{289} $Title{Tunisia Chapter 1E. Destourian Socialism: Tunisia in the 1960s} $Subtitle{} $Author{Robert Rinehart} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{government ben bourguiba party economic political salah tunisia state minister} $Date{1986} $Log{} Country: Tunisia Book: Tunisia, A Country Study Author: Robert Rinehart Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1986 Chapter 1E. Destourian Socialism: Tunisia in the 1960s A motion was introduced at the 1955 party congress supporting the principle of economic planning, without identifying the form it was to take. The next year, however, Ben Salah, speaking as head of the UGTT, formally advocated centralized state economic planning as the basic approach for Tunisia's development effort. Bourguiba promptly rejected the idea, perhaps on the grounds that he would have to delegate too much authority to the planning agency that it envisioned, and Ben Salah was forced from the union leadership. Despite Bourguiba's opposition to centralized planning, the issue remained the subject of debate within party circles. The economic sluggishness of the late 1950s convinced many in the party and the government of the need for long-term planning on pragmatic grounds. By 1960 the UGTT had revived its campaign for centralized state economic planning. Proponents of the scheme eventually succeeded in persuading Bourguiba that state planning offered a solution to the country's outstanding problems, and on the basis of the president's decision an entirely new course was set for its economic development. In January 1961 Ben Salah was appointed to the government as minister of state in charge of the newly created planning department. Later in the year Bourguiba formally introduced "Destourian socialism," announcing that the state would assume an interventionist role in economic affairs. Ben Salah's concept of socialism, however, proved to be much more comprehensive and far-reaching than that outlined by the president. In the months that followed his appointment, Ben Salah increased the areas of economic activity subject to centralized planning, and as the influence of his ministry expanded, his political power became second only to that of Bourguiba. Ben Salah's rise to prominence coincided with the apparent decline of the Neo-Destour Party's influence as a mass movement. Popular support for the regime was grounded on Bourguiba's immense personal prestige rather than on the guidance of the party. Meanwhile, within the party itself the president's handling of the Bizerte crisis had caused some important figures to question his judgment and leadership. Consequently, Bourguiba came to lean on Ben Salah for support and reassurance, and Ben Salah in turn infused the party with what passed for a dynamic ideology. Bourguiba's reliance on him increased after a plot to assassinate the president was uncovered in 1962. Youssefists and Communists were implicated in the plot, leading to the proscription of the Tunisian Communist Party (Parti Communiste Tunisien-PCT) and the discrediting of the political opposition on Ben Salah's left. By the mid-1960s Ben Salah was widely spoken of as the ailing Bourguiba's obvious successor. Ben Salah's planning goals anticipated augmented state control of the economy and the elimination of all foreign participation. The process of economic "decolonization" included isolating the country not only from foreign investments but also from imports. Under the planning scheme, agriculture was regarded as the priority sector and was expected to satisfy the bulk of domestic food demand. Raw material exports, led by phosphates, would be relied on to earn foreign exchange for reinvestment in development. Although discouraging foreign investment, Tunisia sought and received grants and loans from multilateral sources for development projects from the United States and other countries as well as unilateral aid that financed programs in education, health care, energy, irrigation, and transportation. From its inception, Ben Salah's brand of centralized planning, which carried with it the implicit threat of state control of the economy, was inimical to landowning and business interests that still carried some weight in the party. Attempts by Bourguiba to foster open discussion of proposed reform measures within the party broke down in the backlash of the Bizerte crisis. With a deft sense of timing, however, Bourguiba announced a major reorganization of the party in 1963 that was designed to improve the dialogue between the national leadership and local and regional branches in preparation for the next party congress, the first to be held in more than five years. Convened in October 1964, the Congress of Destiny, as it was advertised, endorsed centralized state planning and approved Destourian socialism as the party's official ideology, attempting to reconcile Bourguiba's political ethics with Ben Salah's collectivism. In keeping with its new image, the congress voted to rename the party the Destourian Socialist Party (Parti Socialiste Destourien-PSD). In November, running unopposed under its banner, Bourguiba was elected to a second term as president. While Ben Salah tightened his control over economic policy and consolidated his position in the PSD, Bourguiba turned his attention to foreign affairs and attempted to use his prestige on the international scene as a moderate Arab leader to promote a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian question. In April 1965 he proposed an Arab reconciliation with Israel, in return for which Israel would allow the return of refugees and would cede territory for the creation of a Palestinian Arab state on the basis of the 1947 UN plan. Although Israel welcomed the opportunity for direct negotiations with concerned Arab states, it rejected the 18-year -old plan for a settlement on the grounds that it was not relevant to contemporary conditions in the region. Meanwhile, Egypt and Syria denounced Bourguiba for breaking ranks with Arab solidarity by recommending a course of action that would have implied recognition of Israel. Tunisia kept a low profile officially during the Arab-Israeli June 1967 War, although rioting in Tunis was directed against Jewish residents, and the United States and British embassies were attacked by mobs. The following year, Tunisia broke relations with Syria after Damascus had condemned Bourguiba for his conciliatory attitude toward Israel. The Tunisian government also cited contacts between Syrian agents and radical groups in Tunisia as evidence of attempted subversion. The Tunisian government had initiated agricultural cooperatives, using former habus land, as early as 1956. These cooperatives coexisted alongside a private sector that included peasant smallholders as well as large-scale farm proprietors. Under Ban Salah's direction, the program was enlarged by adding communal property sequestered by the government and again in 1964 to include foreign-owned land that was nationalized that year. Individual farmers, mostly smallholders, had also been allowed to buy expropriated land put up for sale by the government, but as more and more property was brought into the public sector, it became clear that the cooperative system would be developed at the expense of private ownership. By 1968 agricultural production had fallen drastically in the public sector, in large measure as a result of unrealistic planning, incompetent management, and a reluctance among farmers to join the cooperatives. The structural failure of the cooperative system was compounded by drought conditions and a series of extremely poor harvests. Negative reports from the World Bank (see Glossary), highly critical of the planning program and cooperative system, further embarrassed the regime. Resentment in liberal circles within the party over Ben Salah's continued accumulation of power came to a head when Ahmed Mestiri resigned abruptly as defense minister to protest his policy of collectivization. Mestiri, who had held important cabinet, party, and diplomatic posts, was at the time considered one of the most promising of a new generation of leaders-including Ben Salah and Mohamed Masmoudi-and was a member of the party's governing Political Bureau. Although carefully explaining his withdrawal in terms of an objection to the methods by which current policies were applied rather than to their substance, Mestiri also suggested that the PSD was not being true to its own principles in pursuing collectivization. After his resignation he was expelled from the party. Ben Salah reacted to opposition from party liberals by attempting to broaden his already extensive bureaucratic authority and accelerating plans for collectivization. In January 1969 he announced the organization of the National Union of Cooperatives, a superagency that consolidated all aspects of the cooperative sector under his immediate control. Because the cooperative system had been so successful, he argued, it would be extended under the agency's guidance from 1 million hectares to 4 million by collectivizing private landholdings, particularly in the Sahil, where opposition to his policies had been most pronounced. Some observers argued that the agency's establishment was an act of desperation on Ben Salah's part, representing a last-ditch effort to ensure the survival of the cooperative system. Others have pointed out, however, that he was strengthening his bureaucratic power base, from which he managed the greater part of the Tunisian economy, in order to eliminate his opponents. Bourguiba, who was ill at the time, was not in a position to block Ben Salah's moves, even if he disapproved of them. During the spring and summer of 1969, violent demonstrations against collectivization broke out in the Sahil, where large landholders and peasants alike organized to resist the confiscation of their land. Stocks of sheep and cattle were halved as farmers slaughtered their animals or smuggled them into Algeria rather than turn them over to the state farms. It was their determined resistance to collectivization-more than the opposition of liberal politicians or Bourguiba's ultimate intervention-that led to Ben Salah's removal from the planning ministry. In September Ben Salah was transferred during a cabinet reshuffle to the education ministry, a shift that marked the end of the collectivist experiment and was correctly interpreted as the beginning of Ben Salah's political downfall. Intraparty Politics in the 1970s The turmoil caused in the countryside by collectivization and the serious divisions that were developing within the PSD over Ben Salah's role had compelled Bourguiba to reassert his authority over political decisionmaking. His action responded in part to warnings from veteran politicians who were concerned that public faith in Bourguiba's judgment would be compromised as much by his failure to control Ben Salah as by the support he had given to the minister's unpopular policies. Bourguiba also had reason to worry that Ben Salah's bureaucratic empire had become so extensive that it posed a threat to the presidency itself. Bahi Ladgham, who as general coordinator of state affairs had presided over the executive office during the frequent periods when Bourguiba was indisposed by illness, announced that a change in the government's political and economic orientation was required "if catastrophe is to be averted." The edifice of centralized state planning and control of the economy, of which Ben Salah had been the architect, was dismantled virtually overnight. In November 1969 Bourguiba was elected to a third term as president. Before leaving for prolonged medical treatment abroad, he appointed Ladgham to the newly created post of prime minister and head of government. Ben Salah was left out of the government in the cabinet reorganization that followed, was deprived of his party post, and finally was expelled from the PSD. He was later arrested and in June 1970 was convicted of abuse of power and mismanagement of funds after a long trial at which peasants were brought in to describe the hardships caused by collectivization. In his own defense Ben Salah testified that he had only tried to interpret the president's directions and to implement a policy that had originated with him. The judgment of the court was that Ben Salah had misled Bourguiba with "false statistics" and had concealed from him the discontent aroused by the land program in the countryside. Although it was not proved that he had plotted to take over the government, the implication that such a plan existed was strong. Acknowledging the extent of the power base Ben Salah had constructed, Bourguiba boasted that "without me no one would have been able to rid the country of him." The court sentenced Ben Salah to 10 years of hard labor. In 1973, however, Ben Salah, presumably with assistance from supporters still highly placed in the government, escaped from prison and fled to exile in France, where he remained an outspoken critic of Bourguiba and the focus of left-wing opposition to the regime. Bourguiba regrouped his support in the liberal wing of the party, which had opposed Ben Salah. Mestiri was rehabilitated, and when Ladgham formed a new government in June 1970, he was named interior minister and given responsibility for internal security. Hedi Nouira, formerly director of the National Bank, accepted the portfolio for economic affairs in the same government. Ladgham soon became involved in mediating the cease-fire in Jordan between the forces of King Hussein and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Consequently, he was replaced as prime minister by Nouira, whose emphasis on economic liberalization would characterize government policy in the 1970s. Most of those who had opposed Ben Salah could be classified as economic liberals who, like Nouira, favored a return to private sector initiative in economic development and the lifting of restrictions on trade and investment. Some, like Mestiri, who had championed economic liberalization, also subscribed to liberalization of political system, by which they had initially meant greater democracy within the PSD rather than political pluralism. And they were encouraged when Bourguiba spoke publicly of the need for democratization of the political process. Addressing this question, an advisory committee chaired by Mestiri proposed a constitutional amendment in October 1970 that would have allowed for a government led by a prime minister who was responsible to the National Assembly. Nouira submitted the proposal to the legislature, but when no action was taken on it, Mestiri demanded that a party congress be called to take up the matter of constitutional reform, including the sensitive issue of the presidential succession. Citing the delay in setting a date for a party congress, Mestiri offered his resignation in June 1971 from both the government and the party. Bourguiba, who had been undergoing medical treatment abroad during most of the time that the debate on the constitutional questions was taking place, refused to accept Mestiri's resignations and convinced him that liberalization of the political system was on his agenda and would proceed. An October date was eventually set for the party congress, at which Mestiri was expected to play a leading role. Just before it was convened, however, Nouira appointed several officials to posts in Mestiri's interior ministry without prior consultation with the minister. The action was considered to be a calculated provocation, and when Mestiri took the bait and complained, Bourguiba dismissed him. The defense minister, Hasib Ben Ammar, resigned in protest. Despite this prelude, the liberal faction at first appeared successful in gaining concessions at the party congress. When the central committee was elected, Ladgham and Mestiri finished first and second, respectively, in the voting. Ladgham's compromise proposal carried, deferring discussion of the constitutional amendment on parliamentary responsibility in exchange for an agreement on enlarged popular participation in the election of party officials. Against Bourguiba's wishes, the congress formally recommended that presidential succession be based on an open vote of the party. The departure of Mestiri and other liberal ministers left Nouira in a commanding, although not entirely uncontested, position as head of government. Bourguiba placed increasing confidence in the prime minister's management of the government and deferred more and more decisionmaking responsibility to him. Incidents occurred, however, that indicated that other ministers were competing for access to the ailing president. Bourguiba also seemed to suffer periodic lapses in judgment, during which he made ill-advised departures from his usually levelheaded approach to foreign policy. In July 1973, for instance, Bourguiba called on King Hussein to abdicate his throne in order to convert Jordan into a Palestinian state. Jordan severed relations with Tunisia for a time in protest. In 1972 Bourguiba had brushed aside Libyan leader Muammar al Qadhaafi's overtures for a Maghribi union. At the conclusion of a subsequent meeting in Tunis in June 1974, however, Bourguiba and his Libyan guest announced agreement on a plan for the federation of their two countries. Nouira, who was out of the country at the time of the meeting, rushed home to take control of the situation, and the agreement was formally disavowed by the Tunisian government. The foreign minister, Mohamed Masmoudi, whom Nouira considered a potential political rival, was summarily dismissed from the government for his role in influencing Bourguiba to agree to the Libyan union in the prime minister's absence. Relations between the two countries soured after the episode, and Libya was thereafter regarded by Tunisia as the primary threat to its security. Bourguiba seemed once more in charge at the September 1974 party congress. He blamed the excesses of the previous party gathering on those whom he said had mistakenly believed he was "about to die and that the presidency would soon be vacant." Ignoring a renewed appeal by liberals for direct election of his successor, the president declared that he had "now come back in full strength and in very good health to be at the helm of this congress, which is to adopt resolutions to put matters in order." The congress dutifully approved a plan put before it whereby the prime minister, appointed by the president, would automatically succeed to the presidency in case of the demise or permanent disability of the incumbent. Bourguiba thereby confirmed Nouira as his heir apparent. In November Bourguiba was elected to a fourth term as president, running unopposed. The following May the National Assembly unanimously approved a constitutional amendment naming him president for life. Economic Liberalization If those who had looked for political liberalization were disappointed by the outcome of the 1971 party congress, others who had limited their expectations for reform to economic liberalization came away satisfied. The congress endorsed the measures that had been taken to reverse Ben Salah's collectivization policy. Although it reaffirmed Tunisia's official commitment to maintaining a mixed economy that included a significant cooperative sector, party delegates also approved previously enacted legislation that had decisively shifted emphasis from the public to the private sector in order to generate economic development. Among those measures had been the lifting of restrictions on trade and foreign investment. Priority was also shifted away from raw materials to agriculture, tourism, and manufacturing as the chief sources of foreign earnings. The first and most important step in the program of economic liberalization, however, had been the liquidation of state farms. Nearly 300,000 hectares of collectivized farmland were scheduled for redistribution to smallholders. Habus land taken by the state was returned to the original benefactors, and additional property remaining in the public sector was rented to large landholders. Agriculture production, which was regarded as the prime element in increasing economic growth, rose 70 percent in value in the first half of the 1970s, stimulated by improved marketing, modernization of equipment, and good harvests. Although agriculture prospered as a sector, serious contradictions also developed. Increased production was accounted for primarily by larger, increasingly mechanized holdings that provided fruit and vegetables for export. Smallholdings proved inefficient and uneconomic for producing cash crops, and peasant owners reverted to subsistence farming and production for local markets. A pattern soon developed in which peasants, who lacked capital for tools, animals, and seeds, sold their small plots to larger landholders and either migrated to the cities or hired out as farmworkers. Tunisia enjoyed a favorable balance of trade in agricultural goods in the early 1970s, but its farm production, geared to export markets, was unable to keep pace with the growth in domestic demand for foodstuffs. Overall output fell sharply in the late 1970s, largely as a result of drought conditions. Furthermore, Tunisia's export-oriented agriculture was highly susceptible to fluctuations in the West European markets that it supplied. Because of the deterioration of trade and poor harvests, by 1980 imported foodstuffs were almost twice the value of cash-crop exports. Tunisia's industrial base had been small before the turnabout in economic orientation in 1969. Under the new policy, foreign companies and other potential investors were offered generous tax advantages to locate in the country. A liberal trade environment also allowed them to import capital equipment duty free. Later legislation sought to generate domestic investment as well. This policy contributed to significant growth in the industrial sector during the 1970s, especially in assembly plants for reexports, food processing, textiles, and leather goods. The tourist industry, which owed more than any other sector to foreign participation attracted by liberal incentives, accounted for 20 percent of all foreign exchange earnings by 1980. During the same period, however, the cost of capital goods for manufacturing and tourism, imported under liberalized trade policies, exceeded returns for exports and services from those sectors. Opposition and Unrest Social and political discontent, in reaction to the failure to achieve political liberalization and to the social costs of economic liberalization, became increasingly apparent during the 1970s. Particularly evident was dissension on the part of students and organized labor. By the mid-1970s, student demonstrations and strikes protesting education policies and official interference in student governmental bodies had become annual events. Left-wing groups, which won control of student government away from the PSD, also organized students to join trade unionists in their strike actions. One of the advantages that Tunisia offered to prospective investors was a plentiful supply of cheap labor. Likewise, one of the aims of economic liberalization was to encourage the development of industrial and service sectors that would stimulate new jobs in areas where unemployment had been intractable. But rapid growth in these sectors did not cut into unemployment as deeply as expected, and the low wages paid those who were employed lagged behind rises in the cost of living. Unemployment and demands for higher pay were the major causes of labor unrest, which in the 1970s found sympathizers among the urban working class swollen by migrants from rural areas and among jobless youths. The unrest grew in intensity in 1976 when textile and metal workers were joined by public sector employees in utilities, transportation, hospitals, and the postal service in a strike over wage demands that had not been sanctioned by the UGTT. Habib Achour, who was a high-ranking PSD official as well as leader of the trade unions, was caught in a dilemma: the government expected the UGTT to enforce the labor peace necessary for economic development to proceed undisturbed, and at the same time militants in the unions pressured him to demand wage and employment policies more favorable to workers. Achour condemned wildcat strikes led by the militants, but he was also publicly critical of the government's policies. Prime Minister Nouira was anxious to ensure the UGTT's cooperation in controlling labor costs during the five-year development plan that began in 1977. Achour had initially approved a social pact under which periodic wage revisions were tied to increased productivity as well as to the cost of living. Union militants, however, refused to recognize Achour's authority to commit them to the social pact, and wildcat strikes continued in various parts of the country throughout the year. In October an illegal strike by workers at Qasr Hellal turned violent, and the army was called in to break it. The incident at Qasr Hellal marked the first time since independence that the military was deployed to quell a civil disturbance. Although the UGTT had not sanctioned the strike, Achour nonetheless condemned the government's use of the army against workers. Other critics of the regime, including Mestiri, Masmoudi, and Ben Salah, all publicly supported the UGTT in its widening dispute with the government. When regime critics took up the cause of the unions, the dispute between the government and labor went beyond bread-and-butter economic issues and became political in character. Labor unrest thereafter was more than a threat to the government's economic program. The UGTT had a power base that was separate from the party, and its opposition was viewed as a direct challenge to the government's authority. Relations were further strained when a threat was made against Achour's life. Nouira's cabinet was divided on how to deal with the UGTT. When the interior minister, Taher Belkhodja, came out in favor of conciliation with the union, he was removed from office. Shortly afterward, six fellow cabinet ministers resigned to protest his dismissal. Those appointed to replace them supported sterner action to force the UGTT into compliance with government policy. Tension mounted after the UGTT's national council meeting on January 10, 1978, adopted a resolution critical of certain economic liberalization initiatives and alleging that Nouira's government was oriented toward the "consolidation of a capitalist class" whose interests were linked to those of "foreign exploiting capital." The same day that the UGTT issued its attack on the government, Achour resigned from the PSD Political Bureau and Central Committee, although not from the party itself. He explained that his action indicated disagreement only with the current government, to which the government responded that an unrepresentative radical minority had taken control of the UGTT. The long anticipated confrontation between the government and the UGTT occurred two weeks later on January 26, when a general strike was called as a demonstration against the government to protest the arrest of a union official and attacks on union offices. It was estimated unofficially that 150 people were killed when strikers and their supporters clashed with police, soldiers, and PSD militia on what became known as Black Thursday. The scale of violence was unprecedented in the history of independent Tunisia. A state of emergency was declared, and hundreds were arrested, including Achour and virtually the entire leadership of the UGTT. The government characterized the Black Thursday strike as a calculated attempt to incite rebellion against the state. Earlier contacts between UGTT officials and Qadhaafi were cited as proof of Libyan involvement. Achour was convicted on charges of sedition and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. Progovernment appointees were subsequently installed on a new union executive council. During the 1970s several political organizations surfaced and were openly critical of Bourguiba and the PSD and hostile to the government. In 1973 Ben Salah consolidated noncommunist, leftwing opposition in the Movement of Popular Unity (Mouvement d'Unite Populaire-MUP), which was organized in exile in Paris. An internal branch also operated in Tunisia. The MUP's program advocated a socialist economy and called for the formation of a transitional government that would organize free parliamentary elections. In contrast, the outlawed PCT was small, never numbered more than a few hundred active members at home and abroad, but it exercised an influence disproportionate to its size in student circles. The PCT and the MUP were believed by the government to have collaborated in events leading up to the Black Thursday incident. Early in 1977 a large number of liberal dissidents, including Mestiri and several other former cabinet ministers, appealed to Bourguiba to halt the deterioration of civil liberties in Tunisia and called for the convocation of a national conference for the same purpose. The proposal was couched in such a way as to allow the president to distance himself from the actions of the Nouira government. The conference was banned by authorities, but in October Mestiri proposed a National Pact to be signed by representatives of all political tendencies working within the constitutional system that would guarantee freedom of political activity. The preamble of the pact, to which Ben Salah gave his qualified support, was highly critical of the one-party system and recommended movement toward political pluralism. Prime Minister Nouira emphatically rejected the pact and attacked the liberals for what he termed their negative attitude. Lacking a positive response from the government, Mestiri formed the Movement of Social Democrats (Mouvement des Democrats Sociales-MDS) as a liberal opposition group in June 1978. An area of serious concern for the regime was the emergence of political groups rooted in an Islamic revivalist movement that condemned the regime's secularism and attributed a decline in traditional values and moral standards to Western influence. The most important of these groups was the Islamic Tendency Movement (Mouvement de la Tendence Islamique-MTI). The MTI was committed to the establishment of an Islamic state, integrating all aspects of national life in conformity with Islamic law and custom, and it fused religious zeal with a program of economic reform. At its inception, religious revivalism was almost exclusively a student movement that had its base of support at the University of Tunis, where in the early 1980s the MTI had wrested control of student government bodies and organizations from previously dominant left-wing groups (see Religious Life, ch. 2; Opposition Groups, ch. 4). In January 1980 about 50 Tunisian insurgents, trained and armed in Libya, seized the police barracks at Gafsa. The attack coincided with the anniversary of the Black Thursday strike, and it was apparently intended to spark a nationwide uprising to bring down the government. Gafsa was a stronghold of the militant mineworkers' union, and its economy was heavily dependent on remittances from Tunisian workers in Libya. Some locals joined the insurgents in resisting army and police units that retook the area after three days of bloody fighting. All of the insurgents were killed or captured in the engagement. Thirteen of those captured were subsequently sentenced to death and executed. France sent military assistance to Tunisia, and French naval units demonstrated off Jerba Island to discourage Libyan intervention (see International Security Concerns, ch. 5). Toward Pluralism In February 1980 Prime Minister Nouira was incapacitated by a stroke, and Bourguiba turned to Mohamed Mzali, the minister of education, to serve as acting prime minister. Mzali, a moderate, was named prime minister when it became apparent that Nouira would not be able to resume his duties, and in December he was authorized by the president to make changes in the cabinet that strengthened the hand of party liberals. Two of the new ministers had been among those purged from the party during the 1970s. The next month the PSD rescinded the expulsion of some former party and government officials who had crossed over into the liberal opposition. Although Achour remained under house arrest, other union leaders, jailed after Black Thursday, were released from prison. The apparent shift in the attitude of the government deflated the opposition, and Mzali's openly conciliatory policy toward the dissidents persuaded many disaffected liberals and trade unionists to seek reinstatement in the PSD (see Interest Groups, ch. 4). An extraordinary congress of the PSD was summoned in April 1981 to approve a move toward political pluralism. Opposition parties, including the MDS and the MUP, were given permission to participate in the next election, although full legal status was withheld from them. The long-standing ban on the PCT was also lifted, but the MTI and other Islamic groups were explicitly excluded from the political process. Likewise, Islamic political leaders who had been imprisoned were not included in the amnesty granted to the trade union leaders. Bourguiba himself explained that the Islamic groups were committed to using religion for political ends, contrary to the secular nature of Tunisian political institutions dictated by the Constitution. Tunisia's first multiparty elections were scheduled for November 1, 1981. In preparation for the campaign, the PSD and the UGTT put a seal on the reconciliation between the party and the trade unions by agreeing to present candidates as partners on a coalition slate, called the National Front, and issuing a joint election manifesto. In previous elections, union nominees had been included on the PSD list. Just before the November election Achour was released from house arrest and was restored to the leadership of the UGTT. Despite the options offered on the ballot in the November election, the National Front gained 95 percent of the total vote and won all 136 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, as the national legislature was redesignated. Mestiri's MDS, winning about 3 percent of the vote, led other opposition parties. Ben Salah, who had been denied amnesty, dismissed the election as a "maneuver designed to reduce pluralism to a simple election operation." From Paris he held out for nothing less than power-sharing with the other parties, but he was unsuccessful in persuading the internal branch of the MUP to boycott the election. Mzali, regarded as Bourguiba's appointed successor, formed a new government, and in the months after the election the prime minister pushed for greater liberalization both in politics and in the economy (see The 1981 Election: Opposition Parties Sanctioned, ch. 4). * * * The history of Tunisia can be profitably studied, particularly for the preprotectorate period, as part of the general history of the Maghrib. Jamil M. Abun-Nasr's A History of the Maghrib is the most accessible narrative survey available in English of Maghribi history from earliest times to the present. Abdallah Laroui's The History of the Maghrib is a critical interpretive work recommended to readers with some background in the history of the region. Charles-Andre Julien's History of North Africa, edited and extensively revised by Roger Le Tourneau, provides a clear, scholarly treatment of Tunisian history up to 1830. Julien's L'Afrique du Nord en marche brings the coverage up to independence. The late medieval period is the subject of Robert Brunschvig's La Berberie orientale sous les Hafsides des origines a la fin du XV siecle. Leon Carl Brown's The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837-1855 views the period during which Tunisia made its initial attempt to come to grips with the influence of Europe, and Lucette Valensi's On the Eve of Colonialism tries to demonstrate that Tunisia and neighboring Algeria possessed viable political institutions that were disrupted by French intervention. David C. Gordon's North Africa's French Legacy is a study of the intellectual conflict posed by the French presence. Jacques Berque's French North Africa: The Maghrib Between Two World Wars covers social and cultural developments during the interwar period. Tunisia was for a time a popular are a of research by American scholars, who in the 1960s saw it as an example of a single-party state that was successfully modernizing its political and economic institutions by means of an indigenous brand of socialism. Their research, however, has not been updated to take into account the failure of the socialist experiment there. Surveys of Tunisian history and postprotectorate policies from that period include Dwight L. Lings's brief Tunisia from Protectorate to Republic, Clement Henry Moore's Tunisia since Independence, and Wilfrid Knapp's Tunisia, all of which are dated. Among more recent scholarship in English is Norma Salem's revisionist biography Habib Bourguiba, Islam, and the Creation of Tunisia, published in 1984. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography).