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Article: Tunisia economy thrives amid restrictive politics
- Article from:
- AP Worldstream
- Article date:
- October 29, 2009
- Author:
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Once a day laborer struggling to make a living, Mourad Baazouzi now wears swanky sports shoes, manages 22 employees, and pays himself a good salary. With hard work and a small loan from a state-controlled bank, he's joined the middle class Tunisian authorities pride themselves on having created.
Human rights groups say the trade-off for this economic and social success is an overbearing state apparatus that stifles liberties and helped hand the country's president, Zine l bidin enAl, fft trminlosiedelcton Sndy.
unsia's economic advance sounds almost too good to be true, in the face of global recession and few natural resources _ a model other autocratic governments have ...