Movement of Socialist Democrats

حركة الديمقراطيين الاشتراكيين Movement of Socialist Democrats
Party leader	Mohamed Ali Khalfallah
founding	June 10, 1978 Registration: November 19, 1983
Headquarters	25 Avenue Jean Jaures, 1001 Tunis
Alignment	social democratic
Colours)	green
Parliament seats	1 of 217

The Movement of Socialist Democrats ( French Mouvement des démocrates socialistes , Arabic حركة الديمقراطيين الاشتراكيين, DMG Ḥarakat ad-Dīmuqrāṭiyyīn al-Ištirākiyyīn ; Abbreviation MDS ) is a social democratic party in Tunisia that was founded on June 10, 1978. During the 1990s and 2000s it was regularly the second largest party in the Tunisian Chamber of Deputies behind the dominant Constitutional Democratic Assembly , with 16 seats most recently during the 2009-11 legislative period. After the Jasmine Revolution in 2011, it became less important.

history

The founders of the MDS were deviants from the then ruling Socialist Destur Party (PSD), as well as freedom-minded exiles. Some of the founders were involved in the establishment of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH) as early as 1976/77 . The party's first general secretary was Ahmed Mestiri , a former PSD member and interior minister in President Habib Bourguiba's government but who was dismissed from the government and expelled from the party in 1971 after calling for democratic reforms and pluralism.

At that time, Tunisia was a one-party state in which only the PSD was permitted. The MDS therefore initially remained illegal. In 1981 the new, comparatively reform-minded Prime Minister Mohamed Mzali allowed other parties to participate in elections and to be officially recognized if they won more than 5% of the vote. Among the small, weakly institutionalized opposition parties, the MDS had the most promising candidates and even threatened to overtake the PSD in the capital Tunis. The government then manipulated the elections. According to the official result, the MDS came in at only 3.2%, far behind the PSD with 94.6%.

The government later relented, however, and finally registered the MDS on November 19, 1983. During the 1980s, it was one of three legal opposition parties. When Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali took over the state leadership from the long-time ruler Bourguiba in 1987, the MDS welcomed this at first. Some members of the MDS believed that Ben Ali really wanted reform and liberalization and converted to his Constitutional Democratic Collection (RCD) founded in 1988 . Ahmed Mestiri headed the MDS until 1990. During the early 1990s, the MDS was divided on whether to work with the government or continue to represent the opposition. Those who advocated a strict course of opposition either left the party or were marginalized. In 1994 a group of dissatisfied MDS members around Mustafa Ben Jaafar founded the Democratic Forum for Work and Freedom (FDTL or Ettakatol ). However, this was not approved until 2002.

In 1994 the electoral law was changed to guarantee parliamentary representation of the smaller legal parties. The MDS received 10 of the 163 seats in the House of Representatives (19 of which were reserved for the “opposition”, that is, all parties except the RCD). In the parliamentary elections in Tunisia in 1999 , the MDS was again the largest "opposition" party with 13 parliamentary seats. In 2001, the then party leader Mohamed al Mouadda was accused of having formed a pact with the banned Islamist group Ennahda . In the 2004 general election , the party won 4.6% of the vote and 14 seats. The number of seats grew to 16 in the 2009 election .

After the "Jasmine Revolution" of 2011, the MDS lost its importance in view of the many newly founded and legalized parties. In the 2011 election to the Constituent Assembly of Tunisia , the party only won just under 1 percent of the vote and thus 2 of the 217 seats, and in the 2014 election only 0.4 percent of the votes and one seat.

The MDS has published the Arabic -language weekly newspapers al-Moustaqbal (“The Future”) and al-Ra'i (“The Opinion”) as well as the French-language L'Avenir (also “The Future”).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christopher Alexander: Tunisia. Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb. Routledge, Abingdon / New York 2010, p. 46.
2. ↑ Alexander: Tunisia. 2010, p. 48.
3. ^ Susan E. Waltz: Human Rights and Reform. Changing the Face of North African Politics. University of California Press, Berkeley 1995, p. 70.
4. ^ Waltz: Human Rights and Reform. 1995, p. 185.
5. ^ Waltz: Human Rights and Reform. 1995, p. 59.
6. ↑ Instance supérieure indépendante pour les élections: Résultats partiels des élections législatives (Instance supérieure indépendante pour les élections). ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: ISIE.tn ( Arabic  ). 
7. ^ Kuldip R. Rampal: North Africa. In James Phillip Jeter: International Afro Mass Media. A Reference Guide. Greenwood Press, Westport CT 1996, p. 128.