The protests in Tunisia over unemployment carry echoes of Tunisia's Arab Spring revolution in December 2010. In 2010, the demonstrations were precipitated by, among other things, high unemployment. This week, a 28-year-old who had been fighting for a job for two years, was electrocuted after climbing a utility pole in protest over a public sector job prospect for which he was rejected. In Tunisia five years ago, the spark for dissent was also the death of a young protester, Mohamed Bouazizi, a market trader who set himself ablaze. That led to the furious protests that quickly spread and developed into the revolution that overthrew Zein Al-Abidine Ben Ali as Tunisia's president and set off a chain reaction through several Arab countries. The current protests coincide with the fifth anniversary of Tunisia's revolution, which might not be coincidental. The anniversary was supposed to remind Tunisians that they had proclaimed a democracy but the demonstrations are also obviously meant to show the authorities that freedom does not necessarily translate to bread on the table. While Tunisia's democracy has endured, prosperity has not come with it. The unemployment rate has risen to 15.3 percent and the figure is believed to be even higher among young Tunisians. Officials said in September they expected economic growth for 2015 to be just 0.5 percent. The old corrupt structures of the Ben Ali regime are still in place. The economy was also hit hard by last year's terrorist attacks at the capital's Bardo Museum and a beach resort in Sousse. Political compromise in Tunisia may have saved it from the conflicts racking its neighbors. Last year, a quartet of Tunisian civil society groups received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their mediation between Islamist and secular groups to keep the democratic process on track. But the country still faces potentially destabilizing economic problems, partly inherited from the pre-revolution era and the repeated terrorist attacks that have hurt the crucial tourism industry. Thus the mounting anger among young Tunisians across the country because of what they perceive as the blocked path to economic and social improvement. Perhaps taken aback by the scale of the protests, the government is sending distinctly clashing messages. Whereas President Beji Caid Essebsi said the country would "get out of this ordeal" his Prime Minister Habib Essid said his government has no "magic wand" with which to tackle unemployment. Where Essebsi has said one cannot tell someone who has nothing to eat to stay patient, Essid said people need to be patient. There has been agreement that more than 6,000 jobs will be given to people from the northern town of Kasserine where the protests over youth unemployment have spread to towns and cities. But that is simply a first-aid bandage. It will take much more than that to rectify the economy and quell the protests, when more than a third of young people in Tunisia are unemployed and 62 percent of graduates are without work. Tunisia's uprising was the first of the Arab Spring. The political transition might have succeeded but the economic side has not. The unrest, which has forced a national curfew, underlines how the economic roots of the popular discontent have not been addressed, which is why there is a big similarity between 2011 and now. The same Tunisians are back in the same streets for the same reason.
