Alight in Tunisia: a democracy in crisis

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective.

On the events shaping your world.

Today at the Vatican, a trial begins of the most senior church official ever to be indicted. Along with nine others. Pope Francis has said he wants to clean up the church's finances. The sprawling trial will surely shed more light on them. And for years, wine lovers have been told that climate change will affect their favorite tipple. Well, it's starting to happen. Terrible news for many traditional wine regions. And if it's any consolation, a glimmer of good news for newer entrants. But first, For months, Tunisia's streets were filled with angry citizens calling for the government's downfall. Then, on Sunday, their demands were met and the celebrations began. The president, Kais Syed, had decided to take matters into his own hands. He dismissed the prime minister and suspended parliament for 30 days. But it's not clear where Tunisia will go next. World leaders expressed concern about what many are calling a coup, including a White House statement by Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

We are in touch at a senior level from both the White House and the State Department with Tunisian leaders to learn more about the situation, urge calm and support Tunisian efforts to move forward in line with with democratic principles.

The unrest casts doubt on hard won democratic hopes, not just in Tunisia, but throughout the region.

We often think of Tunisia as the only success story to come out of the Arab Spring. It's the only true democracy, really, in the Arab world.

Roger McShane is the Economist's Middle east editor.

But 10 governments in 10 years have failed to kickstart the economy or stem corruption or improve services. And this has led many Tunisians to lose faith in democracy.

But how did we get here? Specifically, how did we get to a stage where the president essentially sacks the prime minister and suspends parliament?

I mean, it's a Crisis that's been brewing for a while. You've had rising public anger over lack of jobs, over terrible services, over corruption. It's been rising for 10 years, essentially. But in 2019, Tunisians elected Kai Said as president. And it was really a protest against the political class. This is a man who had no previous political experience, but he was seen as incorruptible, someone who would clean up Tunisia's dirty political system. And he was given an enormous mandate, winning 73% of the vote. And even before, sort of this latest move, he had been challenging parliament, he had been challenging the political parties, which he despises. And recently, Covid added to this tension. Tunisia is suffering one of the worst outbreaks in Africa. Earlier this month, the government tried to open up dozens of centers offering vaccines, only to have large crowds show up and find just chaos and confusion at the centers. And in a harbinger of things to come, the president stepped in and asked the army to assume management of the country's pandemic response. So the protests this past weekend were really the last straw, I think, for the president. And he says he'll now assume executive authority with the help of a new prime minister who he's going to select.

And how has the remainder of the government responded to that?

I think the parties are scrambling a bit right now. They obviously don't like what just happened, but they don't know how to confront this figure, the president, who is enormously popular. So most of the parties have come out and condemned the move. As you would expect, it's a good sign that everyone is calling for calm, and that's including Inada, which styles itself as a Muslim democratic party. It's the biggest party in parliament. It recently produced a statement which called on its supporters to leave the streets to allow things to calm down.

But aside from the people who are on the streets, what about the Tunisian people more broadly? Do they support the president in this.

Move, do you think?

I think a lot of them do, in part because they are just so disillusioned with the state of Tunisian democracy. That's why you're seeing the scenes that we have seen on the news of celebration. But let's not understate also the support for the political parties, and most importantly, Inada. I mean, this is the biggest party in parliament. It has been for most of the past 10 years. And its supporters have also come out into the street to protest and also to protect the party's offices, which have been attacked.

But in any case, it is a dismantling of the democratic system that Tunisia has been trying to shore up here, what do you think this will mean for democracy?

Yeah, well, it's not good. I mean, I think the country now faces a bit of a catch 22. You would like to see the President succeed in solving Tunisia's problems, but if he does, then I think a lot of Tunisians will resist going back to the old dysfunctional parliamentary democracy. Of course, if he fails, it would probably just further Tunisians disillusionment with the system. It's no secret that the president wants to upend the entire system. He would like to give himself more power and he basically would like to do away with political parties. The system he proposed while on the campaign trail would involve Tunisians electing local delegates. He says that would be based on their merit or character, not their ideology. And these delegates would then appoint regional representatives, and those regional reps would appoint members of a national assembly. Now look, this is a bit of a fanciful idea. In as much as 2/3 of parliament would need to approve revisions to the constitution, that's not going to happen.

So it's clear that some reform needs to happen to keep Tunisia's democracy healthy, to keep the people happy. What is the way out of this, though? This looks like a recipe for impasse.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it's just not clear how firing parliament is going to help turn the country around. The President still faces these intractable problems like a sprawling, expensive, inefficient bureaucracy that the unions protect. There's still the problem that the private sector isn't creating enough jobs. Corruption has confounded every government that has taken power in Tunisia in the past decade. On top of all this, Tunisia needs money. And the government had been negotiating a loan from the imf. The fund isn't going to look kindly on this much upheaval. So it's not clear how Tunisia gets out of this crisis. But there might be a solution to be found. In the past, in 2014, when there was a similar crisis, the parties and the unions and the businessmen agreed to hold a national dialogue. They essentially came together and saved the democratic system. Then a new national dialogue was proposed at the beginning of this year in order to come up with a consensual plan for economic reform. Now the President shut this down, but we'll see what happens. It seems like that might be the only way out of this impasse.

And what about the broader picture of Tunisia as the democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring? What about that sort of bigger picture?

Regionally Yeah, I mean, I think it's truly a shame that Tunisia has, has reached this point. It was seen as sort of a beacon of light for those supporting democracy in the Arab world. And now I think it's seen as setting a terrible example. It's something that authoritarian regimes can point to and sort of say, look, look at how messy this becomes. And even Tunisians themselves have nostalgia for the old authoritarian past, at least that provided stability. It's a shame. But also Tunisia sort of needed a crisis. It needs a big shakeup because things just weren't working properly. They haven't been for the past decade. The question is whether politicians can turn this moment into something positive. And I'm not terribly optimistic.

Roger, thank you very much for joining us.

My pleasure.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu was a powerful friend of Pope Francis. As the second ranking official in the Catholic Church's government, he might have been a Pontiff in waiting. But in September, in a meeting he described as surreal, the Pope stripped him of his title. Today he begins what is sure to be a long trial. He's among 10 people variously accused of embezzlement, abuse of office, extortion or fraud. Never before has such a high ranking member of the Church been indicted. The trial will outline the movement of hundreds of millions of euros, shed light on the Vatican's murky FL finances and may imperil the reputation of the Pope himself.

This trial is really a monster, both in terms of the size of the investigation. The papers resulting from the investigation were reported to run to 29,000 pages. And it's enormous in the sense of the high level of the defendants involved.

John Hooper is the Economist's Italy and Vatican correspondent.

Nobody can recall a trial in which a cardinal has been one of the defendants and in this case the former President of the Vatican's own financial regulatory body. So this is in many respects unprecedented and has been compared to the huge trials that took place in the early 1990s in Italy aimed at cleaning up its corrupt post war political system.

And at the center of the story here is Cardinal Becciu.

Tell me more about him.

What role did he play in the Church?

He was at one point the equivalent of an Interior Minister who is also Deputy Prime Minister. He was widely seen as the second ranking of official in the Vatican after the Secretary of State who is the Pope's right hand man. He was throughout his career a man who was highly respected, if not feared within the Vatican. And he was for a long time considered to be one of Francis closest confidants. In the Vatican.

And he and the other nine defendants.

Here are accused of doing what, exactly?

Well, the case is extremely complex, but at its center is a property deal whereby the Vatican, and specifically the Secretariat of State, acquired a big London commercial and residential property for which the Vatican paid altogether some 350 million euros. The Vatican's prosecutors claim that money was paid to intermediaries that should not have been paid and that various officials within the Vatican helped that process. They all deny any form of wrongdoing. The other and perhaps most colorful strand of this tangled case concerns Cardinal Becciu's dealings with an Italian businesswoman who's also said to have been a secret agent on behalf of the Vatican, securing the release of hostages, including a nun who was kidnapped in Colombia. What the prosecution says, and the woman's lawyers deny, is that instead of spending the money that was handed over to her company, more than a half a million euros, on the purposes for which it was intended, the money was spent on luxury goods and in luxury hotels and spas. All told, the cardinal is charged with embezzlement, with abuse of office, and with inducing a witness to perjury.

And what has the cardinal himself said about those charges?

The cardinal has indignantly and vehemently denied any kind of wrongdoing and said that he's acted in the best interests of the Vatican and of the Papacy. But his fall from grace has been spectacular. Last year, the Pope asked him for his resignation. At that time, it seemed solely because of alleged nepotism. He immediately gave a press conference in which he went through the allegations and protested his innocence. O voluto destinare questicento mi la ero alla caritas. He has argued that he's really been acting all along in the best interests of the Pope. His and other lawyers for the defence have argued for a delay for the trial because they say that it is so complex and that they've only been given since July 3rd to respond to the allegations, which are contained in a document that runs to well over 400 pages. It is conceivable that the hearing of the evidence may in fact be postponed to a later date.

And you say that the cardinal was a very close confidant of the Pope, a potential successor to the Pope. Are there not questions around who knew what when with these alleged dealings?

Francis role in all of this is absolutely central because one of the middlemen accused in the property deal has said that the Pope knew about his involvement and that his right hand man, the Secretary of State, approved the deal in other ways. Pope Francis is heavily involved. The beginning of the investigation, he agreed to summary powers being given to the prosecutors, which they would not normally have in other states. And at the end of the investigation, he personally gave his approval for the indictments. I think that Francis has taken a decision that bringing some light and transparency into the Vatican's finances is worth the damage to its reputation. So in no small measure his reputation, his standing is tied up with the outcome of this trial.

John, thank you very much for your time.

My pleasure.

A warm spring can be great for Europe's wine drinkers. Longer temperate evenings to enjoy a glass of rose from Provence or verdicchio from Le Marche. But for the winemakers, early springs can send chills down their spines and increasingly, their vines. An early spring this year followed by a late frost, caused an estimated 2 billion euros in crop losses.

French officials described it as probably the.

Greatest agricultural catastrophe of the beginning of the 21st century. Some regions lost 90% of their crop.

And this isn't likely to be an isolated event.

Climate change is making it harder to reliably grow wine.

Hannah Nabihu Vioke writes about current affairs for the Economist.

We have records of harvest dates going back to 1354 from Burgundy, France. Air temperatures have increased so much over that 700 year record that grapes are now harvested two weeks earlier than they normally were.

And what do those changing patterns mean for the wines and the wine regions?

So it depends what region you're in. So for some cooler regions, we're seeing that climate change has almost been a boon for winemakers. If we look at Germany, for example, they're largely known for Riesling white wines, but they've been growing red wine varieties for centuries. And it's always been this low end, cheap option because they're never able to properly ripen. They don't have the right conditions. And so because of climate change and rising temperatures, they're now able to ripen these grapes properly. And we're seeing German Pinot Noir suddenly becoming a premium high end option, fetching higher prices. But then for some warmer regions, we're seeing the opposite happen. So places like Italy, Spain and France, which had the right conditions to grow wine, they're now seeing their weather is too warm. Ripening grapes at really high temperatures makes them more sugary. And all of this changes the taste and quality of the wine.

And so what does all that mean for the winemakers themselves?

So I spoke to Elena Lapini, who is a wine producer in the Chianti Classico region of Tuscany in Italy, and she was telling me that she's now seeing the harvest days changing.

The weather is changing everywhere. And it's absolutely clear, especially for us, that we work with the natural so we can really touch the changing.

Elena Lapini was telling me that this year she's going to have to pick them earlier. And at the same time, there's these freak frosts, which has destroyed around 30 to 40% of her harvest, becoming much more frequent. And this is something that worries winemakers.

And presumably those problems, like climate change itself, will just keep getting worse in the future.

Yeah, temperatures are only continuing to rise. So there was a global study that tried to determine whether this was something that was going to become more frequent or if rising temperatures would make frosts less likely. And it shows that fruit and vegetable growers are going to experience this kind of frost damage more in the future, especially in Europe.

And so where does that leave winemakers like Ms. Lippini? What can be done?

So there have been short term tactics that have proved to work. So we're seeing producers in Italy and in France especially, they will light these massive bucket sized antifrost candles, thousands of them. They'll line the narrow pathways between the vines. This is an attempt to warm the air. There's these incredible images of vineyards that appear to be on fire and it's just thousands of these candles. The issue for many small producers, they just can't afford to have thousands of these candles. And a lot of the time it doesn't raise the temperature enough. So it's a short term tactic. What needs to happen really is changing the types and varieties of grapevine that are used. If we want to make them more resilient to climate change, we would have to consider planting more diverse and resilient varieties. But before that happens, it is very likely that the taste of your wine will change and that supplies may diminish.

Hannah, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

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