Tunisia updates
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Tunisia was the birthplace of the Arab spring, and a decade later is the only Arab country still clinging to democracy. Now the president has fired the prime minister and suspended parliament, which is ringed by military vehicles. The lofty hopes and ideals of the wave of uprisings that swept through north Africa and the Middle East in 2011 are at risk of finally being snuffed out in the country where it began.
The root cause is the failure so far of Tunisian democracy to provide a better life for citizens. Even before Covid-19, the country was suffering from poverty, joblessness — especially among the young — economic stagnation, and spiralling debt. The pandemic wrecked the tourist trade, and government mishandling left the country with the highest death toll per capita in Africa. The chaotic launch of 29 drop-in vaccination centres last week prompted the sacking of the health minister, and President Kais Saied put the military in charge of the pandemic response — foreshadowing his broader moves at the weekend.
What lies behind those failings, in turn, is a political paralysis that has prevented government from functioning properly. Nahda, the Islamist movement that won a plurality in the post-revolution constituent assembly elections in 2011 stepped down from government to allow power-sharing with secular parties under a new constitution from 2014. But a succession of restive coalitions shied away from meaningful reforms.
Corruption remained as rife as under the toppled dictator Zein al-Abdine Ben Ali; many Tunisians felt political forces were dividing the spoils between them. Little wonder that many celebrated on Sunday after Saied — a constitutional law expert and political outsider who won the presidency in 2019 on an anti-corruption ticket — ousted prime minister Hichem Mechichi on Sunday. The president had squabbled for months with the premier and with the Nahda leader and parliament speaker Rached Ghannouchi.
Saied has pledged to protect Tunisia’s democracy. But he has used a worryingly questionable pretext for his power grab, saying Article 80 of Tunisia’s constitution allows him to rule by executive decisions. That is only if the country faces an imminent threat, however, and the premier and parliament speaker are supposed to be consulted. Saied has stripped parliamentarians’ immunity and taken over the powers of the prosecutor. The offices of broadcaster Al Jazeera have been raided. The president has also made clear since his election that he is no fan of the party political system.
There are disturbing echoes of Egypt, where Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in 2013 led a military coup that toppled president Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt has shown that when people are fed up with a messy democracy, they will accept autocracy.
The same must not be allowed to happen in Tunisia. The answer to its problems is not a reversion to one-man rule, but dialogue leading to a rebooted democracy. The international community should be more robust in urging respect for the constitution and democratic institutions — and calling on President Saied to refrain from using his new powers to browbeat parliamentarians into accepting a more autocratic system. Tunisia’s political parties, too, must recognise they have lost the people’s confidence. A quartet of organisations, including trade unions that mediated when the democratic transition came close to collapse in 2013, is attempting to do the same now. Tunisia has led the way on democracy in the Arab world more than once. There is still time for it to do so again.
