President Kais Saied, a constitutional law professor, now seems irretrievably offside constitutionally.
For a while, optimists could hope that President Kais Saied hadn’t abandoned Tunisia’s turbulent but exhilarating democratic project – even after he suspended Parliament and fired the prime minister last year, invoking a ‘state of exception’ that allowed him to rule by decree.
That hope now seems largely to have dissipated after Saied this month replaced the independent electoral commission with one he appointed entirely himself. The move appears designed to ensure the electoral body rubberstamps the outcome of a 25 July referendum on radical constitutional changes that will create some sort of grassroots democracy. The new constitution would come into effect after elections planned for December.
Saied’s scrapping of independent electoral observation sparked large public protests in the capital Tunis, with demonstrators chanting for democracy. Many also complained that ‘Saied has led the country to starvation.’ This is a worrying sign that sustained political turbulence is aggravating an already deteriorating economy, with food prices in particular spiralling because of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Tunisia is the country that sparked the Arab Spring in late 2010 and until recently was widely regarded as its only surviving success story. But Saied’s series of undemocratic actions may have buried that trophy irretrievably – though some still hope that the referendum might somehow save the day.
Saied dissolved the body that hires and fires judges, and effectively assumed its powers himself.