Najla Bouden is gone. “We became friends with Si Ahmed,” she said aloud on Wednesday in front of her former boss, who later paid tribute to her. But now she is part of history. Not the great one, as some will say.
But the question that those who prophesy and almost sanctify the President of the Republic, and who are always looking for scapegoats for his record, do not want to ask is whether she could have done better with such a head of state. Far be it from us to defend a leader who has nevertheless found our various criticisms of her impertinent, but the malicious tongues are certainly only half right, as they fail to see the result of work carried out in silence and that has largely come to nothing (such as the bill on state enterprises, which K. Saïed refuses to sign), clearly due to a lack of coordination and osmosis between the two heads of the executive.
The explanation is that there was friction on the line between Saïed and Bouden, as she was reminded at the beginning of June, and certain sources (which we have not been able to confirm) do not rule out the possibility that she was happy to leave. Her broad smile on the steps of the Kasbah last Wednesday might suggest as much.
Bouden gone and the SLA with her?
But Najla Bouden is gone, even if this will not be without consequences. It is worth remembering that long before her, Hichem Mechichi had to restart the whole process of negotiations with the IMF after the departure of Youssef Chahed, which had been interrupted under Elyes Fakhfakh. As history generally begins anew, Ahmed Hachani, who will probably only be a new Bouden, will have to retrace the same path.
A path towards the IMF, which will be all the more complicated as the head of state, Kais Saïed, continues to reject what he calls the “diktats” of Tunisia’s main financial backer, which even conditions the aid promised by the European Union in return for the agreement on immigration (read here the European conditions for all macro-financial assistance, where the IMF is capital (ang)) and all bilateral aid, in strict application of the principle of subsidiarity.
And it would not be out of the question for the new prime minister, a monarchist who has taken revenge on his own history, to be obliged from now on, if only his head of state would allow him to do so, to start all over again with the IMF and also to go through the Staff Level Agreement (SLA), before which the agreement of USD 1.9 billion since Najla Bouden had come to a screeching halt. It was Najla Bouden who discussed the famous SLA and made a commitment to the IMF, twice, in the face of its Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva. And even if Ahmed Hachani were an excellent lawyer, he should know that the IMF does not operate according to the laws he taught at the forerunner of the CBF, which still has the same APTB internet address.
Why attack the ambulance?
Now that Najla Bouden has returned home and could be considered a political corpse, the gunmen lurking behind the scenes are trying to apply the domino theory to the Finance Minister. They had already attacked this woman, who had made a career in taxation, before later apologizing, as they did for the political bureau of the “Al Massar ou Harak of July 25» in a press release published on July 26.
The daughter of an honorable bailiff-notary in Bab-Jedid in the capital, where he was not afraid to help the poor people with their problems in the neighborhood, Sihem Nemsia is a woman who has made a career in taxation, both personally and in her family. She, therefore, knows its nooks and crannies, and knows where to look and who to mobilize. The history of the DGELF testifies to this, even if the Finance Minister is understandably disliked by those caught in the tax net and those who say it’s better to look to the rich and the liberals (which is not entirely untrue). We criticized her a lot. But she played her part in the Saïed team and we played ours.
Although it is a citizen’s duty, the taxman has never been anything other than an enemy, in a Tunisia whose genes are rooted in fear of the ‘mejba’, the taxman of the beys. And this explains all the hatred we might have for all those who embody the taxman, and would even justify speaking ill of him, especially when there is no trace of him in the quality of services provided and the quality of life.
Whether we like it or not, the budget of any state is based on tax revenue, which thus becomes the ideal means of redistributing wealth. The Tunisian budget is no exception. In these times of financial stringency, the taxman is even becoming the only ambulance for the state’s budget and expenditure. And although the current minister, Sihem Nemsia, is the ambulance driver, we don’t think it’s a good idea to shoot the ambulance. We’ll go down in flames, but we mean it.
The Ministry of Finance, a necessary evil, whoever is at the helm
It’s a fact that it’s the Ministry of Finance (even if we don’t like it too much, like the rest of the small businesses and all the taxpayers) that ensures the mobilization of the necessary resources to pay the salaries of civil servants, pensioners, those insured by the CNAM (also a very large beneficiary with more than a billion DT) and patients in public hospitals.
The taxman’s ambulance, even if we call it a predator, will always do the same job, whoever the ambulance driver may be, and even if he forgets that he is also a taxpayer in spite of himself, and forgets, like the minister, that VAT is added to the consumer’s shopping basket.
We will never really like this ministry. But we all know we can’t do without it, especially at a time when money is tight and credit is being denied. We can be grumpy, bad payers and unhappy, but we shouldn’t be shooting at the ambulance or the ambulance driver, whoever it may be. Instead, we should ask ourselves who is shooting at corpses and ambulances, and to what end.
