Last hope for Tunisia

Next week, Tunisians face a difficult yet familiar decision. After more than a decade, unmet aspirations will likely be usurped by a return to Ben Ali-esque centralization of power in a revised presidential system envisioned in the draft of a new constitution. Or, sensing the urgency of the moment, Tunisians could rally once more to reignite the fury that took the Arab world by storm in 2011 to decisively put an end to President Kais Saied’s designs for the presidency in what should have been the Arab world’s first full-fledged democracy.
Most external observers expect the planned constitutional referendum to pass, albeit narrowly, owing to calls for a boycott by the opposition that will likely dampen turnout. Widespread apathy among Tunisians, frustrated by socioeconomic woes and almost a decade of political chaos, will also impact who will show up and what their ultimate choice will be when they cast their ballots.
Faced with the simmering summer heat, soaring food prices and dwindling job prospects, there is simply very little energy to fill the streets and make a raucous challenge to Saied’s power grab, especially without an organized and united opposition movement. As a result, the president’s pillaging of hard-fought democratic norms culminating in next week’s referendum that the government is barely prepared for will write the final chapter of Tunisia’s experiment with democracy.
It begs the question: What lies ahead for Tunisia in this Saied era?
In a nutshell, a dizzying patchwork of contradictory principles and complicated procedures strewn together in the draft constitution are going to become the foundation of the country’s political future. Tragically, the public’s “reward” for its justifiable indifference and apathy is a confusing, illiberal landscape — a stark contrast to the highly touted accomplishments made eight years ago, at the peak of Tunisia’s democratization.
Furthermore, if an expected 30 percent of Tunisians grant Saied what is basically a blank check on July 25, it would cement a process that the president began advocating as far back as 2011. In it, the presidency will essentially become the state itself, making a mockery of the separation of powers by usurping the legislature, erasing the autonomy of the judiciary and rendering the electoral commission obsolete — all hallmarks of the 2014 constitution.
Of particular concern is the focus on establishing an inverted pyramid of power to ensure popular representation in Tunisia’s political processes. Saied’s ideas are not exactly groundbreaking, nor are they feasible, since such a system of governance closely resembles Muammar Qaddafi’s Jamahiriya, which strangled neighboring Libya for 42 years until its downfall in 2011. In it, Qaddafi attempted to invert traditional power structures in Libya by establishing local councils at its foundation, while decision-making remained vested in the presidency, and a notorious intolerance of dissent chastened the public.
Tunisians need not look too far into the future to see their fates years into Saied’s dissonant era. After all, the natural conclusion of an inverted pyramid of power is playing itself out right across Tunisia’s eastern border, and remains a crucial, tragic reminder of the need to resist the allure of something “different” over the unavoidable pains of establishing a functioning democracy.
On paper, Saied’s hyper-presidentialism disguised as returning power to the people sounds appealing, especially to a public exhausted by an ineffectual political elite that prized feckless squabbling over taking decisive action to preempt socioeconomic collapse and end Tunisia’s political malaise. By feigning to give a voice to the voiceless, so to speak, it became possible to center this fringe take on direct democracy.

It may be premature to declare that Tunisia’s experiment with democracy is over. However, there is less and less faith in Tunisians overcoming their apathy and dispiritedness to confront a gathering storm now threatening to decimate their once cherished aspirations.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

In addition, by waffling on economic reform and echoing populist vagaries, Saied was able to secure the tacit collusion of a traditionally vocal, heavily unionized Tunisian urban middle class. This group is increasingly unnerved by the prospect of successive governments acquiescing to demands for painful austerity in order to secure a $4 billion lifeline from the International Monetary Fund.
Strangely, however, even after Saied greenlit talks between the government and the IMF, in addition to dissolving the High Judicial Council, Tunisia’s largest labor union — Union Generale Tunisienne du Travail — shied from opposing the president’s political agenda. By resisting the temptation to corral an opposition movement in disarray to deliver a resounding rejection of Saied’s brand of politics, the union’s fence-sitting indirectly sponsors the president’s unilateralism that will ultimately put the focus on any potential sources of dissent.
The firing of almost 60 judges from the Judicial Council should have engineered a split within the union, given the threat that the judiciary posed to Saied’s political machinations penned in this draft constitution. Should a small plurality create an unconstrained and unaccountable President Kais Saied, there is little hope that the union’s vast ranks would be sufficient for countering inevitable designs to curb its power and influence going forward.
Besides Saied’s war on the judiciary being a sign of what the opposition can expect after the referendum passes, empowering local councils to send representatives to regional councils that will, in turn, appoint representatives to a reworked parliament, has a sinister end-goal. Pursuing this formula for direct democracy will result in elections only happening at a very local level, completely eradicating national political parties — a possible last refuge for the opposition, leaving Tunisia, ironically, with the exact opposite of a democracy.
The June 2022 draft constitution also envisions a bicameral legislature, but none of the representatives will be elected directly by average Tunisians, and new electoral laws are anticipated to favor independent candidates instead — but, even then, nothing is guaranteed. After all, the new constitution is as vague as it is full of loopholes that the presidency can and will exploit to strengthen and consolidate its autocratic rule. Take, for instance, what the 34 articles in the June 2022 draft say about personal rights and civil liberties. On cursory examination, it appears as though the constitution will protect a range of freedoms, but digging deeper, additional articles appear to qualify those rights according to vague cultural, religious and even moral criteria.
Much like in the autocratic constitutions of other Arab countries, nothing is ever as it seems since intentionally vague stipulations or conditions make it possible for aspiring despots to exploit gaping loopholes, particularly in how personal rights and liberties are interpreted, in order to limit or eradicate them. The same goes for proposed procedures and articles that, in theory, read as checks on executive authority but, in practice, tend to be enablers of gross overreach and abuse of power.
It may be premature to declare that Tunisia’s experiment with democracy is over. However, there is less and less faith in Tunisians overcoming their apathy and dispiritedness to confront a gathering storm now threatening to decimate their once cherished aspirations. In addition, Tunisia’s woes are unlikely to cause any ripples or receive any more attention other than perfunctory statements expressing moral outrage. The only hope remaining is that it will take more than a shoddy referendum to transition the North African country back to autocracy, especially given the still formidable opposition movement that is yet to mobilize.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is also a senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and the geopolitical risk advisory firm Oxford Analytica, a member of the Strategic Advisory Solutions International Group in Washington, and a former adviser to the board of the World Bank Group.
Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell