With a stake of less than 30%, Kais Saied has revalidated his mandate in Tunisia
On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself in Sidi Bouzid (Tunisia). His action was the trigger for the revolutions that spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Citizens sought to put an end to dictatorial governments that were distant from the needs of the population. In the case of the small North African country, the popular revolution managed to oust Ben Ali who, for almost a quarter of a century, had been at the head of a government marked by corruption, political repression and poverty for the vast majority of Tunisians. . The transition towards democracy sought to mark the path for other countries in the region that were also going through similar situations.
The authoritarian drift
After the first elections after the fall of Ali, in 2011, the situation in the country did not improve and in the 2019 elections, a then quite unknown Kais Saied, a university professor of Constitutional Law, who won in the second round against Nabil, surprised Karoui. However, after two years in office he decided to dissolve Parliament and dismiss the Prime Minister, Hichem Mechichi, in the midst of an economic, political and social crisis, which was denounced as a self-coup. Along with this, he also promoted a constitutional reform that resulted in a new Magna Carta in July 2022 that granted him many more powers, confirming the authoritarian drift that the North African country has suffered since then (see MN 693, pp. 20 -25).
During Saied’s first term, political persecution of opponents, journalists, activists and human rights defenders returned. To do this, the Tunisian regime has relied on what is known as decree 54, approved in 2022, which criminalizes the use of electronic equipment to share false information. As Human Rights Watch reported in December 2023, “the authorities have used it (Decree 54) to arrest, charge or place under investigation at least 20 journalists, lawyers, students and other critics for their public statements on the Internet or in the media.” media”. Publications like Jeune-Afrique, which in its September issue dedicated an article to critically analyze the political context of Tunisia, have suffered censorship from the Saied regime.
The immigration issue
In recent years, the Government of Tunisia has toughened its discourse against sub-Saharan immigration. Despite the fact that it is a country in which, in recent years, emigration has grown, Saied has adopted the formulas present in the speeches of the Western right, accusing “the hordes of illegal migrants” of criminal acts and of forming part of “a desire to make Tunisia simply another African country and not a member of the Arab and Islamic world.” These words, spoken in February 2023, adhering to the theory of the great replacement, caused an increase in violence against migrants who, according to several NGOs in the country, constitute a community of between 30,000 and 50,000 people (see MN 694, pp. 26-31). Last May, the Tunisian police arrested activist Saadia Mosbah, president of the anti-racism association Mnemty, in another example of how the Saied Administration has turned anti-immigration discourse into one of the pillars of its Government. . This anti-immigration policy has found the support of European countries, which have seen in the figure of the Tunisian politician an ally in their migration policies.
This approach of the European partners is paradoxical, since the president of Tunisia has made an effort during his first term to distance himself from the Western orbit, fundamentally in what has to do with the economic aspect. Saied has sought to reduce economic dependence on his Western counterparts since 2019, especially on issues related to external debt, but the truth is that the Tunisian economy is in a critical situation. This has affected the weakening of the public health system and the supply of medicines. Almost 100,000 students drop out of school every year and public companies are in a precarious situation, as Frida Dahmani denounces in the cited article from Young Africa.
The elections of October 6
In this context, the elections were held on October 6. Although there were 17 applications to run, only three faces ultimately appeared on the ballots. Of them, one, businessman Ayachi Zammel, was sentenced shortly before the start of the electoral campaign to 12 years in prison. Even so, the official results gave him around 7% of the votes. The second, Zouhair Maghzaoui, with just 2% of the ballots, was one of those who supported the self-coup in 2021, although he had recently distanced himself from Saied. With the opposition weakened, the Tunisian president has revalidated his mandate with nearly 90% of the votes, although participation in these elections has not reached a third of the census.
The revolts that took place between December 2010 and January 2011 were called the Jasmine Revolution, a name that, as journalist Rosa Meneses analyzed in 2011 for The Worldwas highly criticized by popular sectors that led that revolt, because “the symbol of the beauty of northern Tunisia cannot be appropriated by a popular movement initiated by the marginalized classes.” Today, almost 15 years after those marginalized classes started that uprising, the effect of Saied’s policies, as Dahmani states in Young Africa“it has been a clear depoliticization of society, without a significant reduction in poverty or a boost to economic growth.” For the correspondent of this publication in the North African country, “what Tunisia needs is national reconciliation, without which no project will be viable.” At the moment, such a thing seems difficult under Saied’s mandate.
