Published on: 14.01.2023 – 15:22
Several rallies took place in the Tunisian capital on Saturday against President Kaïs Saïed’s stranglehold and the country’s economic and social crisis. A mobilization that comes twelve years after the departure and overthrow of former President Ben Ali’s regime.
Thousands of people demonstrated in Tunis on Saturday January 14 against the concentration of power in the hands of President Kaïs Saïed, a discontent fueled by shortages and an economic crisis, 12 years after dictator Ben Ali was toppled.
The motto of the main demonstration, organized by the National Salvation Front (FSN, opposition), was to condemn the July 25, 2021 “coup d’état” led by Kaïs Saïed. However, many protesters said they were also protesting the deterioration of their economic situation Location. “The coup brought us back hunger and poverty. Yesterday the grocer only gave me a kilo of macaroni and a liter of milk. How can I feed my family of 13 with this,” denounced AFP Nouha, 50, a housewife who was demonstrating with the FSN.
“People want what you don’t want. Down with Saïed! Out, out!” chanted the activists, including many sympathizers of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, which dominated parliament before Kaïs Saïed assumed all power in the summer of 2021.
“Tunisia is doing badly”
Kaïs Saïed considered the country ungovernable, dismissed its prime minister and froze parliament. Since then he has installed a government but rules the country by decree. He also reformed the constitution this summer to increase his powers to the detriment of parliament, which was dissolved in early 2022. A announced general election is underway to elect an assembly that will have no real powers.
“Today, Tunisia is undoubtedly in an impasse. It is not doing well, both politically and economically, socially and financially,” explains France 24 Sophie Bessis, historian and Franco-French researcher, Tunisian at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (Iris ).
06:46 Tunisian protesters wave the national flag during a demonstration in central Tunis against their president, January 14, 2023. AFP – FETHI BELAID
“He betrayed us”
Despite similar goals, the opposition parties did not form a unified front at all with rallies in three different points of the capital on Saturday.
At the end of the morning, a thousand FSN protesters forced security barriers to march towards the iconic Bourguiba Avenue before tense clashes with police, who were present in large numbers, according to AFP journalists.
At the FSN demonstration, Omar, a 27-year-old unemployed man, presented himself as a disappointed voter of President Saïed, a constitutional lawyer who was elected in 2019 with almost 73%. “He betrayed us. This is the result : an economic crisis. An unbearable shortage, no milk in our fridge,” he said.
Tunisians, who had largely supported Kaïs Saïed’s takeover, are increasingly dissatisfied with the deterioration in their living conditions, inflation above 10% affecting their purchasing power and the poverty affecting 20% of Tunisia’s 12 million people.
Since the heavily indebted state has difficulty financing the imports of basic products for which it is responsible, there is a chronic shortage of milk, sugar, coffee and, more recently, pasta.
“Save the Country”
At a demonstration by left-wing parties in the city centre, some activists waved chopsticks while denouncing an “authoritarian tendency” by Kaïs Saïed, while others echoed one of the slogans of the 2011 revolution and called for “work” amid an unemployment rate over 15%.
Civil society, which until recently was rather timid, also mobilized on Saturday in front of the headquarters of the journalists’ union SNJT, which is concerned about the ambiguity of a new law to suppress the spread of “fake news”.
At the same time, another procession passed through Tunis and its suburbs at the initiative of Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Destourian Party, an anti-Islamist movement nostalgic for President Habib Bourguiba, hero of independence in 1956. Abir Moussi, surrounded by hundreds of Activists, also denounced the country’s economic crisis for which they “blamed the Saïed regime” and called for their departure.
A “collapsed” democratic process
On the fringes of those protests, in which she did not take part, the powerful union umbrella UGTT spoke out through its leader Noureddine Tabboubi, who announced that “the crucial hour is approaching” for the presentation of a roadmap to “save the country”.
Sophie Bessis explains that “with the dissolution of the old National Assembly, the repeal of the old Constitution and the new Constitution written by the Head of State alone, there are no longer any powers of separation in Tunisia”.
The researcher specifies that the judges’ union was “put under supervision” and “a certain number of judges were relieved of their duties”. “Today the head of state concentrates the three powers. This is an undeniable threat to the democratic process in Tunisia,” she warns, also hinting that this process is “broken”.
With AFP