Is President Kaïs Saïed liquidating the Tunisian Arab Spring, the only one that survived the popular uprisings of 2011? Out of nowhere, theoutsider and conservative constitutionalist won the Tunisian presidential election with 73% of the vote in 2019, not without the massive support of young people, establishing himself as the savior of a revolution emptied of its meaning by corruption and a dysfunctional Parliament paralyzed by its struggles of partisan power.
In the role of savior, he was quick to give himself the right to be omnipotent, as the sole holder of the truth and the voice of the people, he who nevertheless promised to “respect the institutions”. Three years later, his fight against corruption takes the form of a confiscation of democratic debate.
And this is how the legitimate demand for social and economic dignity that the population has been expressing for years in the face of growing inequalities will have been expressed at the ballot box and in practice by the acceptance — enthusiastic or disenchanted — that the future of the country was going through an authoritarian reordering.
Of this dynamic, Tunisia is moreover one example among others.
The coup in the form of a coup in which Kais Saied carried out last year has been widely denounced, at the same time as it caused scenes of jubilation in Tunis. Coup de force by which he suspended the Constitution, dissolved the National Assembly and assumed full powers, governing by decree.
In recent years, in the name of the fight against corruption, he has dismissed dozens of judges and charged dozens of ministers, deputies and businessmen in cases of fraud. A fight which the Islamo-conservative party Ennahda, moreover discredited in public opinion, has particularly suffered.
Under the cover of a necessary fight against corruption, in doing so, he carried out a Chinese-style disqualification operation of his opponents. Said David Hearst, editor of online media Middle East Eye “Saïed is doing to Tunisia what Sissi did to Egypt. Both exploited popular disenchantment with Islamist-led or Islamist-occupied governments to engineer a coup that could eliminate the liberals who supported their takeover. »
On the constitutional level, he continues to bulldoze the state with a reform of his own which he will submit to the people by referendum in just over a week, on Monday July 25. A pseudo-democratic referendum exercise in several respects: because it is organized within the timeframe deemed insufficient; because Saïed installed his men in the electoral commission, which is supposed to be independent; but, above all, because he seems to have decided to apply his reform even if the No wins.
However, his reform was not submitted to any serious consultation, except to an advisory commission whose president, a constitutionalist with views nevertheless sympathetic to those of Saïed, ended up saying that the project presented risks. of dictatorial drift.
It is, however, a reform that completely upsets the country’s institutional architecture. It establishes a hyper-presidentialism without beacons and redefines the relationship between Islam and the state, clearly opening the way to an erosion of the secular and civil character of the Tunisian state. This presents first and foremost risks of regression of women’s rights. It is as if, in the guise of Kaïs Saïed, a Ben Ali 2.0 presented himself, combining a return to dictatorship with a form of recuperation of Islamo-conservatism.
To those who accuse him of liquidating the Arab Spring, Saïed claims – and often in the tone of a prophet – to give it a second wind.
Intello, the 64-year-old man pleads for the radical deconstruction of representative democracy as we know it – starting from the observation that it perverts the popular will… A point of view which cannot be denied that it is plausible .
Baptized “construction of democracy from below”, its reform advocates direct democracy, excluding political parties: the National Assembly would be replaced by local and regional councils elected by universal suffrage and whose main mission would be to rebuild the country on the economic plan.
Paradigm shift, to say the least. But which presents a contradiction: how does Mr. Saïed reconcile his “grassroots” democracy with the fact that his reform would concentrate most of the executive power in his hands? Constitution that he boos to establish his power and impose another.
Democracy, Tunisian sauce… against the backdrop of a bankrupt national economy. Tunisians have short fuses, and rightly so. Mr. Saïed has an interest in seeing his “reengineering” bear fruit quickly.