At the time, the country had more urgent problems. In the years after the revolution, young Tunisians began flocking to join the Islamic State, which had seized large parts of Iraq and Syria. In 2013, two well-known secular politicians were assassinated. Ennahda, which ultimately rejected mentioning Islamic law in the new Constitution, advocated a moderate, nonviolent form of Islam. But Tunisians’ rising sense that radical Islam was rampant, combined with the former regime’s decades-long vilification of Ennahda, cast a pall of suspicion on the party nevertheless. By August 2013, tens of thousands of protesters were clamoring for Ennahda’s ouster. The threat of violence loomed. The crisis ended after Ennahda’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, and a leader of the secular opposition and former Ben Ali regime official, Béji Caïd Essebsi, met in Paris to resolve their differences. After participating in a national political dialogue, Ennahda ceded power, paving the way for the new Constitution to be drafted and adopted in January 2014. The world hailed Tunisia as a shining example of peace through consensus and the two politicians as true statesmen. The quartet of unions and civil society groups that oversaw the national dialogue won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. In December 2014, Mr. Essebsi swept to the presidency. His secular party, Nidaa Tounes, won the most parliamentary seats after running a virulently anti-Ennahda campaign.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story but Tunisia’s electoral system, which had been designed to prevent Ennahda from gaining too much power, limited any party’s ability to claim a majority even after winning an election. Nidaa Tounes needed a coalition partner — and Mr. Essebsi, saying it would stabilize the country, chose Ennahda.His party members were aghast; 32 lawmakers later resigned.“Tunisia was headed toward collapse, just like the rest of the region,” Mr. Ghannouchi said in an interview. “Consensus saved Tunisia for five years. But the coalition’s shaky foundations dominated the next five years, with neither camp willing to make unpopular economic or political changes that could threaten the consensus.“What is happening now is a result of all of that,” said Mondher Bel Haj, a co-founder of Nidaa Tounes who resigned over the decision. “Because of the coalition, Tunisians no longer believed in the elections. And we couldn’t make the necessary reforms.”The fractious coalition could not agree on members of the constitutional court, a Supreme Court-like body that could have declared Mr. Saied’s 2021 seizure of powers unconstitutional. It was never formed. And all the while, the economic hits piled up. Turning to the International Monetary Fund for help, successive prime ministers proposed the same neoliberal fixes again and again: Cut the public wage bill, reduce subsidies and sell or overhaul failing state-owned companies.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story but they all fizzled.