In the fall of 2024, President Kaïs Saïed will seek a second term as the head of the country, hoping to complete the major overhaul of the institutions inherited from the 2011 revolution. But faced with a head of state locked in an exercise alone in power, against a backdrop of economic slump, will the Tunisians want to prolong the experience?
Tunisia continues to do its accounts, but also to settle them. On the one hand, we must put an end to the past. On the other hand, the proposed renewal, based on an incomplete transition, is unattractive. In this in-between, a new political system has been established since July 2021 and the institutional offensive launched by President Kaïs Saïed, materialized by the new Constitution, adopted a year later.
The year 2024 should, in theory, complete this major project supposed to overhaul the entire political system according to the principles of direct democracy. But the process, although progressing at a steady pace, already seems to be running out of steam.
January opens with the second round of local elections. An important step, since it will allow the creation, during the first half of the year, of a National Council of Regions and Districts (CNRD), the second chamber of Parliament established by the new Constitution. A complex functioning chamber, the objective of which is to ensure the coherent regional development of the country, but also to monitor the state budget. Once this is done, all that will be missing from the system is a Constitutional Court to fully enter into the Third Tunisian Republic.
But even this first step seems marked by uncertainty. The level of disenchantment and rejection of politics is such that the risk is great for the executive to experience the same mishap as during the 2023 legislative elections, which resulted in a historically low participation rate: of 11.2% . This tendency towards disinterest was also confirmed during the various national consultations undertaken upstream of reform projects, including that of the education system and teaching, in September 2023. As if the Tunisians, scalded in particular by the referendum on the new Constitution which ultimately only led to the establishment of the system desired by Kaïs Saïed, already no longer saw in the promises of direct democracy that he dangled to them in 2019 anything more than an illusion.
Kaïs Saïed in front of Abir Moussi
To try to reverse the trend, the tenant of Carthage has a unique opportunity this year since he will put his mandate back into play during the presidential election scheduled for the fall of 2024. A priori, the head of state should emerge victorious. At the end of November 2023, a poll by the American firm Zogby Research Services (ZRS) put him in the lead with 21.1% of voting intentions, followed, at ten points, by a peloton led by Abir Moussi, the president of the Free Destourian Party (PDL), and other competitors, some of whom are already no longer in the political circuit or are hardly significant.
While the campaign has not started and the candidates have not yet declared themselves, the outcome seems known. But for Kaïs Saïed, a simple victory will not be enough: in a context of growing discontent, the outgoing president has the obligation, to rebuild his legitimacy and establish his authority, to do at least as well as in 2019, when he received 72.71% of the votes. By equaling or exceeding this score, he would shut up those of his detractors who believe that he should have called early elections after the adoption of the new Constitution in 2022.
It will be all the more difficult to exceed 72% as Tunisians, who, in 2019, had acclaimed Kaïs Saïed for his probity and his profile as a new man, are now expecting something else. The president’s mandate was marked by a general deterioration in the country’s situation. Shortages of necessities, the list of which is growing, have never been greater since independence. Inflation is galloping and Tunisia can no longer resort to international fundraising, except at prohibitive rates. And nothing in the 2024 finance law which was discussed in mid-December in the Assembly suggests a revival of investment, nor any prospect of growth. And popular anger, if it remains contained, continues to grow.
Economically, the approach to the situation remains essentially conservative, and if companies show a certain resilience, the general climate in no way encourages them to propose alternatives, even less to formulate criticism. “The country will have income from tourism to pay its debts, but will not generate foreign currency to finance its imports,” explains an expert, who underlines the very low savings rate. And asks abruptly: “And then, what will we do in 2025? » Pauperized, the middle class seems tired. After the large groups, some of whose leaders are in the crosshairs of the justice system, it is now the liberal professions, assimilated to a small bourgeoisie, who are in turn worried.
“Community businesses”
It would be inaccurate, of course, to assert that those in power are unaware of these difficulties and are not proposing anything to overcome them. Among Kaïs Saïed’s major projects, community enterprises, placed under state control, should in theory revive activity, while better distributing the production of wealth across the entire territory. But this project, which according to estimates only concerns 8% of the economy, will only produce its effects in the medium or long term, and today the state coffers are empty. The implementation of this system promises to be all the more complicated as the central government struggles to find local relays. Many competent officials have been dismissed or dismissed from their positions, and for those who remain in office, the climate is one of suspicion while legal proceedings multiply, often against a backdrop of denunciation.
If private entrepreneurs, almost all of whom are considered corrupt by the president, are under pressure, the same is true for the media or opposition leaders, more and more of whom are targeted by prosecutions based either on article 72 of the penal code, which defines cases of attacks on state security or on decree 54, which punishes the dissemination of “false news”. “Given the difficulties the country is experiencing, now is not the time for freedoms,” argue some supporters of the Head of State to justify this repressive escalation.
Elected in 2019 to turn the calamitous page of political Islamism, make some adjustments to the 2014 Constitution, and moralize political life, Kaïs Saïed preferred to reduce the entire country to silence, dismissing judges, business leaders, and local elected officials, opponents, and journalists who speak too freely, bringing civil society to its knees and isolating the country on the international scene. Using the entire range of populist arguments, from the defense of sovereignty to various conspiracy theories, he is agitated but struggles to make us forget that Tunisia, now deprived of almost all its external support, is running out of steam. And to make matters worse, it suffers from the devastating effects of a drought of historic proportions.
Faced with disillusioned voters, some of whom are increasingly wondering what they will put on their plate in the coming months, the president nevertheless persists in proposing only one path: imposing a model of governance that he designed and of which he alone seems to have a glimpse of the mode of operation.
