Emergency measures remain for now
TUNISIAN President Kais Saied has vowed to appoint a prime minister but said emergency measures that he announced in July would remain in place. On July 25, Saied sacked the government, suspended parliament, removed MPs’ immunity and put himself in charge of the prosecution.
He has since renewed the measures for a second 30-day period, and had not responded to calls for a roadmap for lifting them. Saied has insisted his actions are in line with the country’s post-2011 revolution constitution, under which the head of state can take “exceptional measures” in case of an “imminent danger” to national security.
Speaking to a large crowd this week, Saied, an opponent of the country’s parliamentary system, said the legislature had turned into “a marketplace where votes are bought and sold”.
“How can they be representatives of the people while their votes in parliament are bought and sold and sittings are paused so the price can be agreed?” he asked.
The crowd interrupted his speech with the shouts of “the people want parliament to be dissolved”. National television station Watania, which broadcast the speech live, repeatedly cut out and eventually promised to broadcast a recorded version.
Saied, a political outsider, came to power in 2019 on a wave of public
outrage against political parties widely seen as corrupt and self-serving. Saied accused “traitors” of selling the country. “This is not an issue of a government but of an entire system,” he said. “Sovereignty belongs to the people!”
Saied delivered his speech to a noisy crowd in Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, in front of the municipality where Mohamed Bouazizi, a vegetable salesman angered by police harassment, set himself ablaze in December 2010. Bouazizi’s act triggered an unprecedented uprising that left some 300 people dead and toppled long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, sparking of revolts across the region. A decade on, many
Tunisians feel their quality of life has worsened in the face of grinding economic, social and political crises, exacerbated by Covid-19. Many Tunisians took to the streets in July in support of Saied’s moves.
But rights groups have warned that measures including military trials of some Saied opponents reflect a worrying trend towards authoritarianism. The measures have also received criticism from his arch-foe, the Islamistinspired Ennahdha party, which formed the largest bloc in parliament before its dissolution by the president.
Protesters, many of them Ennahdha supporters, marched through central Tunis on Saturday.