The former law professor, who became a strong and omnipotent man after the July 25, 2022 referendum, leads the dance alone in a country that was the cradle of the Arab Spring. The vast majority of Tunisians firmly believe that he is leading Tunisia towards the precipice.
It is now the Tunisia of Kaïs Saïed, not of all Tunisians. The President of the Republic succeeded in passing his project for a new Constitution of which he was the writer and the solitary architect. A supreme law that gives him unlimited powers, with no real checks and balances. Indeed, the constitutional referendum, which took place on Monday, July 25, 2022, endorsed his project with 94.6% of the votes cast.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Never have Tunisians been so numerous to take part in an election since the Jasmine Revolution of January 2011. The constitutional referendum of July 25, 2022, only mobilized nearly 25% of voters, the overwhelming majority of whom voted in favor of a new president’s constitution. Nearly 7 million voters shunned the ballot boxes, out of a total of 9,296,064 registered Tunisians, according to the electoral authority. An unprecedented and record abstention rate which cannot be explained solely by the disaffection of Tunisians with regard to political life, but which rather expresses a clear position not to support the despotic project of Kaïs Saïed. Several political parties had called for a boycott of the ballot as a sign of rejection of the process launched by the head of state a year ago. One thing is certain, if the “Yes” won, it was because it was the supporters of the Head of State who turned out the most at the polls.
The new Constitution establishes a hyper-presidential regime. It strengthens the powers of the head of state, unlike the 2014 Constitution, established after the Arab Spring, which voluntarily limited the role of the president, to avoid autocratic regimes. Thus, the president has the prerogative to appoint the head of government and ministers and to dismiss them as and when he sees fit, without the support of parliament. It ratifies the laws and can submit legislative texts. For the president, the Constitution does not provide for a dismissal procedure. Finally, the Head of State will be able to appoint magistrates on the proposal of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, whose prerogative this was formerly.
Even the person who was mandated by President Kais Saied to draw up the new Constitution, in this case, the jurist Sadok Belaid, declared that the final text of the new Constitution is different from the version he presented, believing that he could “open the way to a dictatorial regime”, like that deposed of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Habib Bourguiba. A track record justifies the fears of opponents. Kaïs Saïed had, on July 25, 2021, suspended Parliament and dismissed the government. The people had believed for a moment in an air of change, especially after ten years of governance by the Islamists of Ennahdha marked by the spread of corruption and political assassinations.
Negative outlook
The major opposition parties, namely the Islamist movement Ennahdha and the Free Destourian Party, led by lawyer Abir Moussi, denounced a text “tailor-made” for Kaïs Saïed, the absence of checks and balances with the risk of having a president who is accountable to no one. They castigated an “illegal process” carried out without consultation with the various components of the Tunisian political scene.
Two days before the referendum, hundreds of people demonstrated in Tunis against the new constitution. “Get out”, “the people want the fall of Kaïs Saïed, the people want the fall of the Constitution”, in particular chanted the demonstrators gathered at the call of the National Salvation Front (FSN), a coalition of opponents.
A situation that does not bode well for a politically destabilized country. To this political instability is grafted an economic gloom which pushes the State towards bankruptcy. The rating agency Fitch Ratings assigned the country a CCC rating (speculative category), with a negative outlook. Tunisia is plagued by unemployment of nearly 18%, inflation of nearly 8%, a current account deficit estimated at 10% of GDP for 2022, and a public debt estimated at 87% of GDP qualified by the IMF as “unsustainable” and a real possibility of default in 2023. That’s not all. Cereal and energy prices have soared since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022. The purchasing power of Tunisians has shrunk like a trickle.
The worst thing is that in the new Constitution, there is no real economic recovery project capable of getting the country out of the impasse of external and internal debts and of resuscitating a moribund economy. But the head of state has instead focused on the political aspect, which grants him immense powers without safeguards, completely ignoring the country’s institutions and their previously acquired constitutional roles.
The Land of Jasmine is today witnessing a dangerous democratic regression, even in the opinion of a large majority of Tunisians. How can President Kaïs Saïed claim popular legitimacy with a ballot shunned by nearly 70% of Tunisians?
The former law professor, who became a strong and omnipotent man after the July 25, 2022 referendum, leads the dance alone in a country that was the cradle of the Arab Spring. Whether politically, economically, or socially, Kaïs Saïed’s Tunisia is doomed. The semblance of economic reforms that he has been undertaking for almost two years has been a fiasco. Rather than encouraging internal and foreign investment, he contented himself with pulverizing the external debt in order to maintain himself. Today, neither its “ally”, France, nor international donors want to reach out to it or borrow money from it again.
