Never before has Tunisia’s Parliament shown such allegiance to the regime in power. The Assembly of the Representatives of the People has been reduced to serving as the presidency’s relay, as Kais Saied seizes the opportunity to tighten the executive authority’s grip on Parliament.
Kais Saied was reelected as Tunisia’s president in the first round of elections. His Soviet-like score of 90.69% must not obscure record voter abstention rates: more than 7 out of 10 Tunisians—and more than 94% of Tunisian youth—did not turn out to vote. While there is no evidence that massive fraud took place on election day, the entire electoral process was marked by repressive tactics aiming to cement Saied’s second term in office. Recap of the past election year and the crackdown which ensured the outgoing president’s victory at the polls.
Following one of the world’s most dramatic democratic transitions since the early 1990s, Tunisia’s descent into personalist rule has been equally stark. Although Kais Saied’s accumulation of power bears similarities to executive aggrandizement in other parts of the world, Saied’s regime is atypical in other ways that may be telling of the president’s assets and liabilities as he and his opposition navigate the first presidential elections since the coup.
They are grassroots activists, journalists and politicians. They face the wrath of a regime which sets out to silence dissenting voices. And, like their male counterparts, these Tunisian women pay the price for their activism.
In the months after the 2011 Tunisian uprising, the Islamist party Ennahda emerged from the shadows of repression to win a comfortable victory in the first free elections, dominating in urban Tunis almost as much as it did in rural Tataouine. The party soon became the most important actor in the democratic transition. But now, in the face of a sharp authoritarian reversal, Ennahda faces its most serious crisis in decades.
In the aftermath of General Franco’s victory in Spain’s civil war, an ally of Hitler and Mussolini, nearly half a million Spanish Republicans were compelled to flee their homeland starting in February 1939. This mass exodus, known as the Retirada, saw hundreds of Spanish Marine officers seeking refuge in Bizerte, Tunisia, from May 1939 to June 1940. They found themselves in work camps, particularly near Mount Chaambi in Kasserine, where despite enduring hunger and illness, most remained for 17 years, from 1939 to 1956, with some staying until the early 1980s. Only about 20 of them died there between July 1941 and October 1949, and were laid to rest in a now-forgotten cemetery.
Kais Saied is particularly generous when it comes to spouting off vague accusations. Ever loyal to his habitual fallback, conspiracy theories, the Tunisian president is quick to point a finger at certain “parties” without naming them, to throw verbal jabs and employ sarcasm as captured in videos diffused on social media. With all this verbal jousting, who has time to respect the rule of law anyway?
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.
What do the designation of a new prime minister and the public admonition of national television’s CEO have in common? Both highlight President Kais Saied’s new priority to « cleanse » the administration. Envisioned as a means to further consolidate the regime’s grip on power, the planned purge may in fact undermine the fragile web of alliances that is holding it together.
Her departure from the Kasbah has been as discreet as her arrival. A late night post on the Office of the President’s Facebook page informed Tunisians of Prime Minister Najla Bouden’s dismissal from office. After less than two years serving at the head of government, this unassuming university professor is leaving the field with an underwhelming track record in confronting socioeconomic issues. What is remarkable about Bouden’s term is how she stood by an increasingly authoritarian regime.
Since 2021, Tunisia has been living a paradox. Never has the rule of law been so abused as it is today, under the regime of a university professor of constitutional law. Most concerning about the situation are its potentially long-lasting consequences, and the series of dangerous precedents now engraved in the country’s collective memory.
President Kais Saied’s time in power has been anything but uneventful. However, his claims of speaking for ‘the people,’ his hatred of any institution that stands in his way and his endless conspiracies, which dominate the public conversation while the economy sinks, all have parallels. They’re there in Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez and even Silvio Berlusconi.
Recent statements by high officials in the West—namely Giorgia Meloni and Emmanuel Macron—in addition to increased contact with Qatar are burying the aspirations to turn away from Tunisia’s traditional western allies, as proposed by supporters of the current regime. Close up on the geopolitics of president Kais Saied.
Both at home and abroad, Kais Saied is—more than ever—alone. Well before his scandalous remarks concerning sub-Saharan migrants, he had already erected the walls and forged the bars of the cell that he occupies today. And with his isolation, Tunisia is condemned to devastating paralysis.
Extremely low participation in the first round of legislative elections has brought the government face to face with a dilemma: how to set up a regime intended to be the expression of the people’s aspirations…without the people?
Presented as a crucial political moment, the December 17 legislative elections were supposed to be the final act of Tunisia’s state of exception which began on July 25, 2021. If nothing else, this affirmation deserves to be put into perspective.
« Tunisians residing abroad (TRE) have suffered a double penalty: first of all, the number of their representatives’ seats decreased from 18 to 10. Second of all, the requirement for obtaining 400 sponsors is absurd and unfair » says one candidate who did not make into the upcoming legislative elections. Indeed, the country’s new electoral law has clearly diminished TRE’s chances of benefiting from representation in parliament.
New figures quantifying the candidacies presented for Tunisia’s upcoming legislative elections are cause for concern. According to numbers reported by the Independent High Authority for Elections, equality between men and women is naught. Furthermore, not all Tunisians will necessarily benefit from parliamentary representation. And candidates’ visibility in the media is problematic, as coverage will be focused on individual runners not on electoral lists as usual.
