TUNIS: With the
burial in Saudi exile yesterday of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,
Tunisia is turning the page on more than two decades of nepotism and repression
with a large dose of indifference. 
Forced out of Tunisia on Jan 14, 2011, by weeks of popular outrage
spurred by the self-immolation of a market trader protesting police harassment
and unemployment, Ben Ali died on Thursday in the Saudi city of Jeddah. His
death did not feature especially heavily either in the news or the
conversations of ordinary Tunisians, in a country that is in the midst of
elections.

Reflecting the
pluralism that has emerged since Ben Ali's downfall, two non-establishment
candidates made it through the first round of a presidential poll held last
Sunday - one a socially conservative academic committed to radical
decentralization of power, the other a populist media magnate currently behind
bars.

The funeral of
the former president took place in the holy city of Madinah in Saudi Arabia
yesterday, an AFP photographer said. He was laid to rest at Al-Baqi cemetery
next to Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) mosque and a place of great reverence for
Muslims. His body, covered by a green shroud, was carried to his final resting
place by a procession of about a dozen men. Some dressed in white, and others
in suits, they crossed a marble forecourt in the shadow of the green dome of
the mosque, before entering the cemetery.

Some of his
family were to receive condolences today in an upmarket suburb of Tunis,
according to a small notice published in La Presse newspaper. The ex-leader's
wife, Leila Trabesli, who has led a comfortable and discreet life in exile with
daughters Nesrine and Halima - along with son Mohamed - has little incentive to
return home. She faces heavy sentences for embezzlement, alongside possession
of weapons, drugs and archaeological artefacts.

Ben Ali himself
was sentenced several times to life in prison, including for the bloody
suppression of protests in the last weeks of his autocratic rule, which killed
more than 300 people. He never faced justice. "The second president of the
Tunisian republic henceforth belongs to history, and history will judge
him", said his Lebanese lawyer Akram Azouri.

Several trials
are ongoing, notably under the auspices of the Truth and Dignity Commission,
which is mandated to shine a light on violations committed between 1955 and
2013. The commission has collected witness testimony, documents and information
from official archives so that those implicated in serious abuses can be judged
by special courts. Fourteen public hearings have meanwhile brought a measure of
closure for relatives of the disappeared. They have also seen public testimony
on the network of corruption established by Ben Ali's nephew, Imed Trabelsi,
who was a pillar of the regime.

The extended
family of Ben Ali's hated wife captured vast swathes of the economy, as
detailed by the World Bank in a 2014 report. The global lender said that by the
end of 2010, the 114 people who comprised the Ben Ali clan controlled 220
businesses that hoovered up more than a fifth of all private sector profits.
When he was forced from power, hundreds of businesses and properties, along
with luxury cars and jewelry hoarded by the Ben Ali family, were impounded
through a state holding company.

That firm -
Karama Holding - still owns 51 percent of telecom company Orange's Tunisia
operations, a majority of the country's biggest cement company, and swathes of
agricultural land and palaces. The Tunisian state is still far from retrieving
all of the pillaged funds. One highly visible symbol of the rot that set in
under Ben Ali is a collection of rusting yachts gathered at the port of Sidi
Bou Said. Luxury cars and even a camper van, offered for sale last year, have
failed to garner interest.

Persistent social
and economic problems have fed nostalgia in some quarters for the Ben Ali era
but that is a limited phenomenon. Abir Moussi, the only candidate to overtly
defend the record of Ben Ali's former ruling party, came a distant ninth in
last Sunday's presidential election first round with four percent of the vote.
- AFP