Tunisia was caught in Chaos and violence, after riots broke out last week over skyrocketing prices and high unemployment.
The former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled the north African country for 23 years, fled to Saudi Arabia, as the riots developed into a political crisis and raised serious concern from both the Arab world and the international community.
The turmoil in the country, known as "peaceful oasis" in north Africa, was triggered by the death of a university graduate in central Tunisia, who burned himself after the police confiscated his unlicensed fruit cart. However, some analysts believe that the economic recession and aftermath of the global financial crisis is the real reason behind the collapse of the strongman's regime.
Although the World Davos Economic Forum has just published its report on the competitiveness of tourist trade in the world and has ranked Tunisia 39th out of a total of 130 countries, the imbalance in Tunisia's national economic development has been a chronic illness for a long time.
Since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, the traditional manufacturing industry of Tunisia, which relies on cheap labor force as its competitive advantage, faced severe challenges due to the shrinking international demands. With withered Foreign investment and climbing trade deficit, the deficit of current item in 2010 has accounted to 4.1 percent of its Gross Domestic Products (GDP).
The sovereign debt crisis of Euro zone also gave a heavy blow to Tunisia's economy in 2010. The Tunisia dinar linked with Euro depreciated about 10 percent against U.S. dollar, which affected its pillar tourism industry in the past two years.
Meanwhile, the sluggish economy made the employment environment further deteriorate in the country. According to some economists, the unemployment rate is much higher than the official declared 14 percent, and nearly 30 percent of the jobless are university graduates, who became the major force in the riots.
In the first 10 month of 2010, Tunisia's customer price index ( CPI) has increased 4.5 percent, much higher than 3.4 percent of 2009. The soaring price on food, fuel, housing and other necessities ignited the public discontentment. Although Ben Ali has vowed not to seek for his sixth presidential term in 2014 and pledged to create more job opportunities for the youth, the clashes between protestors and police, killing more than 20 people, still plunged the country into turbulence after decades of stability.
The analysts said, the vacuum of the political power in the country needs a long time to fill in after the leave of Ben Ali, which marked a new era of Tunisia. The widespread riots have turned Tunisia volatile in the recent days and the only way to get rid of the dilemma is to maintain social stability and sustain economic development.
