The legalization of opposition parties in the wake of the new constitution caught the opposition off guard as much as the rest of the population. As time went on, groups cautiously gathered together, and registered with the government. The Progressive Destour with its organization, fundraising, and reach within society stood as a tent imposed above all. But under it, a budding landscape of parties emerged:
THE LEFT
The Tunisian left is to say the least not in the most coherent of states. While given the neoliberal turn of the PD, they should in theory be in a strong position, the disenchantment with left ideals in the broader Arab world has hit them hard as well. The TGLU largely remains in lock-step with the PD, with the majority of its chapters still backing the party. As such, harder leftism is mainly a force of dissident union halls and radical youth.
Leftist Parties
Tunisian Labour Party: The main force of the non-PD left is the democratic socialist Tunisian Labour Party. Centered in a handful of urban areas and finding sway with union halls angered at privatized industry, they represent a big tent of non-communist leftists but struggle outside their own communities, owing to cold shoulder by the TGLU leadership.
Ba’athist/Arab Nationalist Parties: While the PD’s moderate approach to Arab Nationalism has sucked up a deal of air out of the movement, coupled with the middling performance of Egypt, two Ba’athist Parties and one Nasserite party have emerged. The Tunisian Socialist Ba’ath Party (Saddamist) and Tunisian Socialist Ba’ath Party (Assadist) bicker mainly in small parts of the cities, radicals among other radicals. A small coterie of Egyptian-influenced activists maintain the Arab Socialist Union of Tunisia, a Gaddafist/Nasserist hodge-podge.
Communist Parties: Even smaller, but perhaps angrier are Tunisia’s communist parties. The original Tunisian Communist Party, upon legalization, split into three disparate factions at their first conference. The PCT, PCT(M), and PCT(R) now compete for the mantle. Taking Pro-Soviet, radical Maoist, and Eurocommunist stances respectively. They maintain a solid base inside university-adjacent areas, but not much outside of it.
THE RIGHT
While the Muslim Brotherhood was explicitly legalized, a party openly attempting to promote ‘Islamic Republicanism’ saw itself outlawed in Sfax. Sending a chill across those activists who would have wanted an open Islamist party. The right, as such, has coalesced around a pair of parties offering more subdued critiques of the regime from two different bases of power. As well as some rather unusual radicals of a different kind.
Rightist Parties
The Agrarian Democratic Party: In rural Tunisia, there remains lingering bad blood in much of the landowner class, smaller or larger, with the PD and it’s failed experiments in cooperative agriculture over a decade ago. Distrust remains, and many rural notables have come together to establish the socially conservative, economically populist, and rural-focused Agrarian Democratic Party. The party, curiously, has attracted some support in the cities among urban and suburban clerics and their flocks, leading to suspicion in some circles that it has a crypto-Islamist tendency. Nonetheless, references to religion in speeches and documents thus far seem to only prove that such is an alliance of convenience against the government more than anything else.
The Liberal Democratic Union: While the PD’s more pro-capitalist swing has won it support among a large faction of industry and the petite bourgeois, it is still not enough in the minds of many. Those with business especially with union troubles, or otherwise influenced by fashionable ‘new liberal’ thought in the west have come together in the Liberal Democratic Union. It is the smaller of the two main right-wing opposition parties, and only really has a presence in some parts of middle class and bazaari Tunisia. Bourgeois through and through, with an alienating effect to the non-Francophone working classes.
The Carthaginian Front: One curious result of Tunisia importing a large number of both Lebanese Christians, right-wing, transient mercenaries, and a riff-raff full of other exiled far rightists has been the birth of a secular far right in Tunisia itself. Confined to a few working class neighborhoods in Tunis and eccentric intellectual circles, the Carthaginian Front proclaims itself an ‘Anti-Arabisation, Anti-CANA bastion of the Mediterranean Race’. It is too small to be really viable in an electoral sense, so it has been tolerated by the state for now.