The Tunisian revolution, culminating in the departure of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, holds a special significance in the broader narrative of the "Arab Spring". While several nations experienced similar uprisings, many popular movements stalled or backslid, and are now labelled incomplete or even counter-revolutions. Examining the recent Tunisian trajectory under President Kais Saied is crucial for understanding not only the complexities of its own path, but also the wider phenomenon of unrealized revolutionary potential across the region. Was the initial fervour simply a miscalculation? Or were conditions for lasting change not yet mature? Or did the masses, weary of the heavy costs of revolution, settle for compromise and half-measures? Najla Ben Salah's analysis of this trajectory offers valuable insights into these critical questions, shedding light on why, despite its initial promise, the Tunisian revolution, like so many others, remains a work in progress.
Sunday, 25 July 2021 was an ordinary day in Tunisia. The weekend coincided with the anniversary of the founding of the republic, but few Tunisians suspected that President Kais Saied’s speech that night marking the Republic Day celebrations would lead Tunisia on a fresh path towards a constitutional overthrow of government. But a tank was stationed in front of the Tunisian parliament building and soldiers were preventing deputies from going inside, while another tank was stationed in front of the state television building.
President Saied's decision to freeze parliament before dissolving it sparked great enthusiasm among a large segment of the population, who took to the streets to celebrate. Meanwhile the Ennahda Movement, which held the majority in parliament, denounced Saied's actions, describing them as a coup d’etat. The other bloc in parliament found it difficult to come up with a clear political characterisation of the Tunisian president's decision and did not announce a clear position for one reason only: namely that Ennahda and its allies in parliament were fighting a president with limited powers. This struggle created a stifling political crisis in Tunisia
Between 2017 and 2021, Tunisia’s rating on the Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International had increased from 42 points out of 100 to 44 points. In 2018, the issue of the Halak El Manzel oil field caused a public outcry as a foreign company was allowed to exploit the field despite the expiration of its legal licence. Sit-ins took place in the southern Tataouine Governorate to demand residents’ rights to the proceeds of oil and gas production while I Watch, the local anti-corruption and transparency watchdog, held Prime Minister Youssef Chahed responsible for the issue. Also during that period, the Tunisian parliament became a battleground between different parties and blocs, leading to the secular Nidaa Tounes party—which shared power with Ennahda—splitting over the outsized influence of President Beji Caid Essebsi’s son within the party which some members opposed.
In 2015, a youth movement called Manich Masamah (I will not forgive) was formed to fight a reconciliation bill concerning business leaders involved in corruption cases during the Ben Ali era—which many young people viewed as a whitewashing exercise. For two years, the movement protested to get the bill overturned, but it was approved by a majority vote in parliament in September 2017, acquitting the businessmen of looting public money, causing great discontent especially amongst the youth.
Many Tunisians had not forgiven Ennahda for more than eight years of government mismanagement, during which Tunisia witnessed the assassination of two political leaders in one year, in addition to seven terrorist operations that left 140 civilians and members of the army and police dead. These included more than 50 tourists during two terrorist operations only four months apart in 2015. Nor have Tunisians forgiven the party and its allies in parliament and government for their mismanagement of the health crisis the country experienced during the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2021. This resulted in more than 29,000 people dying of the disease.
On 17 July 2021, Tunisia recorded the death of 205 people in one day due to the virus, the highest rate recorded in the world on that day. The parliament demanded that the government attend a hearing, but the session was postponed after government members excused themselves owing to “emergency commitments”. However, I Watch revealed that Hichem Mechichi, then prime minister, was spending the weekend in a luxury hotel in Hammamet alongside other government members as seen in photos published on their private social media accounts. The news angered Tunisians, who criticised the government's indifference to the dangerous health situation, as hospitals filled up with covid patients and resuscitation units had no oxygen. This was combined with the slow pace of vaccination against the virus, considered the worst performance among the Arab countries, with MPs, officials and police receiving the vaccine before other Tunisians, and a shady deal to purchase masks that benefited the then-minister of industry and a member of parliament.
At that time, Tunisian President Kais Saied was in an escalating conflict with parliament, specifically the Ennahda Movement, which had dismissed Prime Minister Elias Fakhfakh, supported by the president, and installed Hichem Mechichi in his place. The conflict between Saied and Ennahda reached the point where the party accused him of “threatening democracy and authoritarianism” and called on him to “stop all efforts to disrupt and dismantle the wheels of the state”.
The spread of the coronavirus, revealing the weakness of the health infrastructure, deepened the crisis and Saied seized the opportunity on 25 July 2021 to announce his decision to suspend parliament, dismiss the government, and implement exceptional measures. He entrusted the management of the health crisis to the national army, which had been his bastion since being inaugurated as president in October 2019.
President Kais Saied has fortified himself well to avoid being removed from office. He has made frequent visits to the army and police barracks, and each time he has issued threats against parliament and the government from there, reminding troops of their duty to protect the homeland. He has also refrained from signing the Constitutional Court law, which would give legislators a pathway to impeaching him, the only way he could be removed from office.
A large section of Tunisian society supported the measures to suspend parliament for two reasons. First, the president is popular thanks to frequent appearances in the Tunisian media as a university professor outside the political party system. This earned him the reputation of being “clean” and a man who could be the country’s saviour. Saied also took advantage of the party quotas within parliament, which allowed him to blame the failure of successive governments on the previous formula for democracy and to present his own version of participatory democracy and popular control of parliament. All of this provided him with broad popular support during the first year of his “coup”.
A year after the suspension of parliament, President Saied started to lay out his new path under the banner of fighting corruption. He issued new decrees for running the country as well as proposing a referendum to amend the constitution, written with the ostensible participation of experts. In late 2022, the Court of First Instance in Tunis issued a list of 25 names of people accused of conspiring against the internal security of the state and seeking to commit a “monstrous order” against the head of state. The list included the name of President Saied's former chief of staff, and it was expanded in early 2023 to include key leaders of the Ennahda party, some other opposition politicians, and a businessman who had been described as a “terrorist”. According to a report by Amnesty International, more than 70 people have been arrested since 2022, including politicians, lawyers, journalists and businessmen, and most of them have been detained for more than the legally permissible period of 14 months without a judgement.
Since 2021, President Saeed has been raising the slogan of fighting corruption and fighting conspirators, and prison doors have been opened to his opponents and critics, especially after the issuance of a law combating cyber crime that criminalises criticism of officials. Officials of local organisations have been arrested on charges of money laundering due to their support of illegal immigrants. President Saied's policy during his three-year administration prior to the recent presidential elections was to threaten to prosecute conspirators amid a severe economic crisis that brought the country to an inflation rate of 10.4 per cent, the highest in three decades, a rate linked to a significant annual increase in consumer prices.
President Kais Saeed has not presented a plan to overcome the crisis. Rather he has bet on what he calls civil companies for investment, a project that has been criticised even by those close to the president due to its ambiguity. However, Saied is pushing hard to make his project a success despite all the legal obstacles he faces due to loopholes in the law regulating these companies. In contrast, the government supported by Saied relied on borrowing, part of which was allocated to support the state budget, and the value of the loans allocated to support the budget in 2024 reached the considerable sum of 7,200 million dinars, equivalent to $2.25bn.
The Tunisian president has never hidden that he is against what he calls “intermediary bodies”, including the Constitutional Court, independent bodies, the media, and political parties. Therefore, he has not been slow in freezing independent bodies such as the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication, the National Anti-Corruption Commission, and three other bodies.
Indeed he has been theorising about getting rid of such bodies for years, before he came to power. He took advantage of the crises and the conflict between parties in parliament—which were broadcast live on social media and state television, even to the point of exchanging blows in the debating chamber—and told Tunisians they were not bound by this form of democracy and had no need of squabbling parties. In this way, he was able to “demonise” parties and adopt the proposal of direct democracy connecting the people directly to him. Every time he walked through the streets of the capital and addressed the people, he reassured them. He promised to protect them from conspirators and he knocked on the doors of ministers and officials and chastised them in front of the cameras wielded by his own presidential palace cameraman.
President Saied's speeches are full of threats to conspirators inside and outside the government who are obstructing his efforts to build the country. This gives him the veneer—for many people at least—of being the only decent man in the country.
The leaders of Tunisia’s largest party, Ennahda, are in prison. The head of the Free Constitutional Party is in prison. Nidaa Tounes ceased to exist after its split. The other parties have no real weight, except for the People's Movement, which initially offered him support and managed to win seats in parliament, before changing its position.
President Kais Saied thrives on crises, including ones he creates himself. This is because he is a good man from a populous neighbourhood in the capital; he does not possess wealth and did not plunder the state like so many others. This has been enough for a section of Tunisians to put their belief in him, even if he makes promises that he has no plans to implement, promises that do not include rights and freedoms but rather cleansing the country from “conspirators and thieves”, as he often would say.
Many Tunisians want a revolution that guarantees two things: employment and an acceptable standard of living. They have pinned their hopes on President Kais Saied because he has marketed to them the idea that they are the real decision-makers and that the process of cleansing the country from corruption will restore its wealth. In contrast, the elites in Tunisia cannot widen their support to defend people’s rights and freedoms, because they themselves have been villainised and accused of being above the demands of Tunisians.
President Kais Saied knows that he is on a bumpy road. Despite his success in securing a second presidential term, the turnout in the legislative elections two years ago was not satisfactory, as it did not exceed 11 per cent. During last year’s presidential elections, he also worked to eliminate all his opponents, despite the administrative court’s acquittal in his favour, and members of parliament who supported him voted to amend the electoral law days before the vote. Saied is counting on his allies in the European Union, especially the political right in Italy, after he accepted the role of guarding the southern Mediterranean basin in exchange for some aid—but what is more important to him is a lack of European criticism about the deteriorating human rights situation in Tunisia.
