The last time Tunisia plunged into crisis, its nascent democracy crumbling amid political stalemate, assassinations and protests, it was up to the country’s traditional guardians to find a way out. A coalition of respected trade unions, lawyers and human rights activists intervened to preserve the constitutional system, earning them the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.
The Nobel committee recognized the National Dialogue Quartet, as the groups were known, for protecting the advances made with the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, which toppled the longtime Tunisian dictator and sparked the Arab Spring uprisings across the country. Middle East.
For a decade, Tunisia was the success story that much of the rest of the world craved. While other Arab uprisings deteriorated into civil wars, coups or repression, democracy in Tunisia — a country of 12 million on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa that juts out into Italy — survived the 2013-2014 political crisis and continued to thrive. advance.
But a new constitution and several free and fair elections failed to give Tunisians the bread, jobs and dignity they had taken to the streets to demand. Now, with the economy weakened by mismanagement, the pandemic and the Ukraine War, the country is heading for disaster.
On July 25, 2021, President Kais Saied dismissed his prime minister and suspended Parliament. He has since consolidated an authoritarian government. Saied swept away the Constitution, the legislature and the independence of the judiciary and electoral system. But the groups that led the country out of the last major political crisis have done nothing but issue restrained warnings urging caution.
In July last year, said Monica Marks, a professor of Middle East politics at New York University in Abu Dhabi and an expert on Tunisia, “many Tunisians said, ‘Dictatorship cannot happen here. Civil society is too dynamic’. . But it happened, and too quickly.”
“This is not to say that Tunisian democracy is threatened,” she continued. “Tunisian democracy has been shot in the head. So why aren’t they doing anything now?”
Part of the answer lies in the toxic reputation the young democracy has earned among many Tunisians — not just among those who think that life has not improved at all from the period before the revolution, but also among activists, journalists and members of civil society who flourished after the revolution. lift it up.
Parliamentarians and parties that proposed few answers to the country’s problems ended up being seen as corrupt and inefficient. This is especially the case for the Islamic legend Ennahda, which dominated the legislature in the post-revolution era. Judges, despite their supposed independence, seemed to have their tails stuck with the politicians who appointed them.
Although the media were independent, most vehicles belonged to businessmen linked to the regime of the deposed dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. While some oligarchs continued to control much of the economy, corruption and bureaucracy hampered the livelihoods of other Tunisians.
“It wasn’t like we were living in some kind of democratic paradise,” said Thameur Mekki, editor of Nawaat, an online hub for dissidents under the old regime that after 2011 became a highly regarded independent media platform. After Saied’s internal coup, spontaneous celebrations lit up the capital, Tunis, in both affluent suburbs and poor neighborhoods.
Tunisians from many sectors and backgrounds saw savior potential.
Human rights activists sought to partner with the president to promote reform. Lawyers saw him as a leader with the courage to straighten out the judiciary. Businessmen calculated that he had the political capital needed to restructure the economy.
But by September 22, when Saied began to rule by decree, those hopes were already evaporating. “Nobody wants to go back to July 24th,” Mekki said, “and nobody wants to go back to July 26th either, after all Kais Saied has done.” In his campaign to remake the national political system, Saied dismantled the most important post-revolutionary Tunisian institutions. Last month, when the elected parliament rejected his actions in an irregular virtual session, Saied simply dissolved him.
Saied announced last month that ahead of a referendum scheduled for July – when he wants to pass his plan to rewrite the 2014 constitution and strengthen the presidency – he will replace most members of the independent electoral council with names of his own choosing. .
Last week he threatened to dissolve political parties altogether. In doing so, he has drawn some of the strongest criticism so far from civilian observers and the opposition. Amid all this political turmoil, the government has been unable to pay the salaries of civil servants. Negotiations to obtain an IMF bailout package, which would be little more than an interim solution, are at a standstill.
A shortage of products such as wheat flour, exacerbated by the Ukrainian War – where most of the wheat consumed in Tunisia comes from – is pushing prices to unaffordable levels for many.
Bakery prices have gone up, baguettes are getting shorter, and long lines form every day. The government recently announced the third hike in fuel prices this year. “People are getting fed up. We’re eating half the bread we used to eat,” said cleaning lady Naziha Krir, 44, who in late April said she had just paid double what she used to pay for three loaves of bread in Tunis.
“The country is getting worse and worse” under Saied,” she said.
Polls reveal a hemorrhage in support for the president, even if he is still by far the leader Tunisians trust most. This winter in the Northern Hemisphere was the first in years when the country was not shaken by mass acts. Tunisians are hesitating between what they see as two evils.
Many Tunisians hope the stalemate will be broken by the UGTT, the famous trade union that helped the country win its independence from France in 1956 and led the Nobel-winning dialogue that preserved the constitutional system during the 2013-2014 political crisis.
With more than 1 million members, the trade union central has the power to paralyze the country with strikes. But, according to analysts and activists, public opinion has been preventing the UGTT and other important civil society entities from making a more resolute opposition to Saied. Unwilling to face a popular president, the union central hoped to influence Saied’s negotiations with the IMF, which will likely demand that the country freeze civil service salaries and take other measures painful to the members.
Although it has hardened its stance towards the president, the UGTT still maintains what its chief economist, Sami Aouadi, described as “a position of critical support”.
Aouadi said that the UGTT decided to pressure Saied to negotiate to resolve the political crisis. But the dialogue the central has in view seems very different from the inclusive discussions of 2013: Aouadi said Ennahda should be excluded, echoing a common refrain that sees the political party as primarily responsible for the destruction of the economy, thanks to corruption and mismanagement. .
Other opposition leaders believe that ignoring the country’s biggest political party will mean excluding Tunisia’s important Islamic electoral base. Secular opposition leader Ahmed Nejib Chebbi wants to form a coalition against Saied. “I’m trying to find common ground with Ennahda, because we need to look forward, not backward.” Ultimately, he said, Tunisians will likely be forced to accept Ennahda’s participation in any kind of political resolution.
On the brink of economic disaster, Chebbi predicts, “people won’t have much choice.”
