Tunisia takes to the streets against President Saied's authoritarianism
Rights — di Luigi Mastrodonato
Over the past two years, Tunisian President Kais Saied has concentrated power in his own hands. Now protests are intensifying.
Tunisia takes to the streets against President Saied's authoritarianism
Over the past two years, Tunisian President Kais Saied has concentrated power in his own hands. Now protests are intensifying.
- For several weeks, protests against President Kais Saied have been taking place in Tunisia's main cities.
- In recent years, Saied has transformed Tunisia's democratic political system into a hyper-presidentialism with a single man in command.
- In recent weeks, dozens of people have been arrested, including political opponents, journalists, judges and trade unionists.
For weeks, Tunisia has been in turmoil. President Kais Saied has in recent years steered the country in an authoritarian direction, concentrating ever greater power in his own hands, muzzling the opposition and implementing repressive policies against immigrants. Against this backdrop, the country is living through a deep economic crisis, to the point that the government in Tunis is negotiating a loan with the International Monetary Fund.
Faced with this difficult situation, from January and the anniversary of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011 onwards, street protests by an increasingly angry population have intensified. The democratic process that began in Tunisia more than ten years ago with the fall of dictator Ben Ali appears increasingly fragile.
Tunisia's authoritarian drift
Kais Saied took office as President of Tunisia in 2019, winning over 70 per cent of the vote in the second round. An independent figure with broad popular support, he was called upon to lift a country struggling economically and socially, but in 2021 gave his presidency an authoritarian turn in order to break a political deadlock.
Saied assumed full powers, dismissed members of his government and suspended parliament. The latter was then permanently dissolved in spring 2022, with the president accusing its deputies of seeking to undermine the country's internal security. In this situation, Saied began to govern through presidential decrees, also in light of the new Constitution he promoted and approved without a quorum last summer. This established a form of pure presidentialism, giving the president the power to unilaterally appoint and dismiss the prime minister and ministers. Saied also introduced a new electoral law that excludes parties from the contest, allowing only independent, lone candidates to stand.
Last December saw the first parliamentary elections under the new system, with turnout extremely low: around 11 per cent, confirmed in the January run-off. This was seen as evidence that the president's popularity and that of Tunisia's political institutions are collapsing, at a time when the country is also experiencing a deep economic crisis, with basic goods in short supply and the risk of default. And the discontent has become even more apparent in recent weeks.
Protests grow
On 14 January, Tunisian streets were flooded with thousands of protesters. The focus of the protest was President Kais Saied, with calls for his resignation. And this took place on a date that was anything but coincidental: it was on 14 January 2011 that Tunisia ousted dictator Ben Ali.
It was not the first protest against Saied in Tunisia in recent years. Demonstrations against the ongoing authoritarian drift in what had appeared to be the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring have been going on for a couple of years, but dissent seems to have finally erupted in 2023. In the weeks following 14 January, further large-scale demonstrations took place, also in response to the president's heavy-handed treatment of dissent.
Saied has had arrested around ten political opponents, but also judges, journalists and an important trade union leader. He has accused them of terrorism and of seeking to subvert the rule of law, and those who showed solidarity with them have also faced consequences. Esther Lynch, Secretary General of the European Trade Union Confederation, was served with a presidential decree of expulsion from Tunisia, after she had taken part in a demonstration in Sfax against the ongoing authoritarian drift.
Against sub-Saharan immigration
In recent days, the delicate situation unfolding in Tunisia has acquired a new and troubling chapter. President Saied, drawing on the classic template of xenophobic nationalism, has raised with verbal aggression a topic that has historically found no place in Tunisian public debate: that of immigration.
The president invoked the cornerstones of the European integralist identitarianism so dear to political parties such as that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Marine Le Pen in France and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and adapted them to the Tunisian context. "Illegal immigration is part of a conspiracy to change the demographic make-up of Tunisia so that it is seen as an African country only, and no longer also Arab and Muslim," Saied argued, invoking the thoroughly debunked notion of the "great replacement". The reference is to sub-Saharan immigration, with figures that have been inflated to millions of arrivals, when in reality the total number of immigrants present in Tunisia stands at 250,000.
At least a thousand of people protested in downtown Tunis today, against racism. The protest comes after Président Kais Saïed spoke about the migration of sub-Saharans last Tuesday, saying the flow must be stopped and calling for urgent security mesures against them. #Tunisia
Language and ideals that are increasingly aligned with those of the Tunisian Nationalist Party, a minority far-right political force with which Saied has been increasingly flirting of late. And positions taken just a few weeks after the visit to Tunisia by Italian ministers Antonio Tajani and Matteo Piantedosi, during which agreements were signed providing for a commitment by Tunis to block migrant departures towards Italy, in exchange for the financial resources needed to revive the Tunisian economy.
🇮🇹🇹🇳 Il Vice Presidente del Consiglio e Ministro degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale, Antonio #Tajani, è in missione in #Tunisia con il Ministro degli Interni, Matteo #Piantedosi.
The combination of the search for a scapegoat — migrants, in this case — and the need to stem their arrival in the country, given the commitments signed at an international level with Italy and others, could explain Saied's new xenophobic course. The result is that episodes of racist violence in the country have soared, with raids on homes in search of undocumented people and attacks in the street. And people have taken to the streets again against the president.
What future for Tunisia?
"Saied's election in 2019 came about because of disillusionment with the traditional parties that, from a popular perspective, betrayed the principles of the 2011 revolution," explains Leila Belhadj Mohamed, an Italian-Tunisian journalist. "This is why, initially, the population welcomed the authoritarian drift that began in July 2021. Today, however, we can say that there has been a reversal of course, confirmed also by the very low turnout at the most recent legislative elections."
According to Leila Belhadj Mohamed, President Saied is increasingly alone at the helm of a country at risk of financial default, whose economic crisis is pushing entire families to try to leave their homeland. "The move to stigmatise the sub-Saharan migrant population is an attempt to divert public attention towards a new enemy to blame for the economic crisis — a narrative we know well in Europe — by exploiting the racism historically absorbed by the population during the colonial era, also to wink at the EU in the hope of securing new funds," she explains.
🇹🇳 In an interview with FRANCE 24 Saturday, #Tunisia's Foreign Minister Nabil #Ammar defended the anti-migrant rhetoric of President Kaïs Saïed, considered shocking by the #AfricanUnion.
"We have been astonished by the communique of the African Union," Ammar said.
"We have been astonished by the communique of the African Union," Ammar said.
In this context, making predictions about the future becomes difficult. "We don't know how the situation will evolve, but civil society will certainly play an essential role in opposing Saied, just as happened with Ben Ali." The situation in Tunisia looks increasingly like a powder keg. The path towards democracy taken in 2011 appears to have been blocked, but the Tunisian people do not want to stand by and watch. And the future could be even more complicated.