Tunisia: Ex-regime not fully erased yet

Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali says his country's revolution is at a critical juncture as the old system of the former dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime is yet to be fully erased. "It is true that we toppled [the dictatorship] because the former president had to flee. But the whole system has not yet been overturned," said Jebali at DGAP, a foreign policy institute in Germany, on Wednesday, AFP reported. "The Tunisian revolution is now at a crossroads," he added. Jebali warned that there were still forces inside the country, who would prefer a return to the past, which, he said, was heavily marked by corruption. The Tunisian premier also held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Tunisian uprising began in late 2010 and ended Ben Ali's 23-year-long rule in January 2011. It also inspired a wave of anti-regime protests across the North Africa and the Middle East, which came to be widely known as Islamic Awakening and led to the downfall of long-time dictators in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Marking the victory of the revolution was Ben Ali and his family’s escape to Saudi Arabia. The former dictator, however, took along with him millions of dollars of wealth. In June 2011, a Tunisian court sentenced him and his wife to 35 years in prison, having found them guilty of embezzlement and other charges.