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The security forces at first allowed the demonstrations to build for a few hours. Then military forces fired shots into the air, followed by occasional blasts from a water cannon to disperse the crowd. After the former government’s swift and ruthless attacks on any unauthorized public gathering, however, the crowd seemed to revel in the relatively gentle response. “A shower,” shrugged one man, in French, his suit and overcoat soaking wet. A man in red shoes danced in the puddles in front of the chanting crowd.

The outlawed Communist and Islamist parties were excluded from the talks.

France was the colonial power in Tunisia until 1957, when Habib Bourguiba became president. Ben Ali took over from him in a bloodless coup in 1987.

In Egypt, where the leadership continues to rely on a decades-old emergency law that allows arrest without charge, there is a lot of room for free and critical speech, offering a safety valve for expression that did not exist in Tunisia, he said.