Never has the health of a Tunisian president been the center of so much public attention. The spotlight was on Kais Saied’s physical condition from the moment he announced his candidacy for president. After refraining from commenting on rumors relating to his mental health, the president responded for the first time to remarks about his absence from the end of March through early April 2023.
Over the past year, Tunisians have struggled to keep their pantries stocked. Necessities, especially staple food items, are often missing from the shelves of local grocery stores and supermarkets. These ongoing shortages have more than one cause.
After having left government to the task of establishing a program to eliminate subsidies for basic goods, President Kais Saied has switched gears.
The majority of community-based enterprises created over the past year intend to operate in agriculture. But this project, driven from start to finish by the president, has yet to live up to expectations.
Tunisia’s new agreement with the IMF is just two months away from becoming operational. The government, however, is far from being prepared to navigate what follows once it begins the precarious task of dismantling the subsidies system which covers basic goods and hydrocarbons. Rather than alleviating pressure on the country’s most vulnerable groups, it is likely to incite anger and indeed set off the social time bomb that it had hoped to disarm.
There will be no fiscal revolution for Tunisia in 2022 as many might have once hoped. The country’s new finance law remains loyal to the same business model under which physical persons, including the most disenfranchised segments of the population, contribute a significantly larger portion to tax revenues than do businesses.
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