Maya Jribi: Tunisian politician who blazed a trail for secularism, feminism and democracy

She was for decades at the vanguard of progressive ideas, pushing for them doggedly against the will of undemocratic men who were eventually forced to yield

‘I was marked by feminism even before I discovered its principles,’ the politician once said (AFP/Getty)

Maya Jribi was the first woman to lead a political party in Tunisia. Her steadfast opposition over decades to the rule of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali helped usher in the Jasmine Revolution and, in turn, the Arab Spring.

A photograph from 2011 shows her held aloft by supporters giving a victory salute as the fall of Ben Ali sent shock waves across the Middle East.

Jribi, a formidable champion of women’s rights and progressive values, had become a national symbol of resistance.

Last week, a sea of people turned out to her funeral.

Tunisia’s president Beji Caid Essebsi, a fellow secularist, praised her “honesty and loyalty” and pursuit of “the values of democracy, justice and equality”.

​Jribi was born in Bou Arada in northwest Tunisia. Her father was a civil servant from Tataouine. Her mother was Algerian. Having originally hoped to become a doctor, Jribi studied biology at the University of Sfax.

It was while she was a student there that she first became active in politics, joining the students body UGET (Union générale des étudiants de Tunisie) and the Tunisian League of Human Rights.

Determined to get in touch with the working class, as she put it, upon graduating Jribi tried to get work in a factory. She failed. Instead she had a short-lived career as a journalist, before working as a fundraiser for Unicef.

In 1983 she set up the Progressive Socialist Rally with Ahmed Najib Chebbi, later renamed the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP).

Tunisia’s revolutionary leader Habib Bourguiba had been in power for more than 20 years by that point and had only just opened the way for such political parties to form – at least in name. It took five years for the party to gain legal recognition.

In ailing health in 1987, his prime minister, Ben Ali, assumed power, moving swiftly to marginalise both Islamist and progressive political forces.

In October 2005, Najib Chebbi and seven others embarked on a 52-day protest – including a 32-day hunger strike – at the headquarters of the Tunisian Order of Lawyers in Tunis. The “18 October Coalition for Rights and Freedoms”, named in honour of the protest, finally succeeded in gathering all the opposition parties together. Jribi’s input was key to its success.

On 25 December 2006, Jribi succeeded her mentor Chebbi as secretary general of the PDP, becoming the first woman to lead a Tunisian political party. A year later, Jribi herself would go on hunger strike, joining her old friend to protest against the forced eviction of the PDP from its Tunis headquarters.

The strike, which lasted for 20 days and left her “featherweight (43kg) and with the look of teenager” according to Le Monde, had serious lasting effects on Jribi’s health.

Jribi at a demonstration in Tunis, 2013 (Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

By then change was coming for Tunisia: May 2008 saw an uprising in the Gafsa Mining Basin where Ben Ali’s “economic miracle” had not improved the lot of the workers at all.

And January 2011 finally saw Ben Ali ousted. He fled to Saudi Arabia with his wife.

In the elections that followed, Jribi stood in Ben Arous and became a member of the national constituent assembly. As the new Tunisian constitution took form, Jribi was a strong voice in opposition to the Islamists.

Journalist Rachid Khechana described her rationale: “She wanted to put the Arab-Muslim identity of Tunisia in a progressive perspective. For her, there was no contradiction.” Jribi was an outspoken feminist.

The following year, the PDP joined other secularist parties to form the Republican Party. It received a drubbing in the 2014 election winning one seat.

But the influence of the values she stood for and fought for superseded electoral success. In 2016 her longtime political foes in the Islamist party Ennahda renounced political Islam.

Her increasing ill health meant she had to take a step back from politics, announcing her retirement at the party’s 2017 convention.

Jribi died of cancer in Radès, near Tunis, at the age of 58. She once told Jeune Afrique magazine: “I was marked by feminism even before I discovered its principles.

“I had a very strong mother and I learned from both my parents’ intellectual rigour, to have the courage of my convictions and to speak the truth.”

Speaking to a Tunisian radio station last year, she said: “I will leave politics when I leave life.”

Maya Jribi, Tunisian politician, born 29 January 1960, died 19 May 2018