How Kaïs Saïed emptied democracy in Tunisia

The president reconfirms himself with 90% at the end of elections characterized by the mass elimination of his opponents.But to consolidate his power, Saïed will not be able to ignore the country's economic crisis, as he did in the previous 5 years.

The 90 percent of the votes obtained by Kaïs Saïed confirm the resounding yet obvious victory of the man who in just 5 years of presidency has radically transformed the Tunisian democracy, became a desert for oppositions and political participation.The drop in turnout, which the results show was just under 28 percent, represents the lowest figure ever reached during a presidential election since the 2011 revolution, while at the same time telling of the definitive disconnect between an electorate increasingly gripped by social and economic emergencies and the president.However, the loss of trust in the institutions and the consequent lack of popular legitimacy of the vote do not seem to worry Saïed - who had also entered politics thanks to the strong support of citizens - and indeed seem to push him in the same direction in which he has started the country in recent years.The horizon facing Tunisia in the aftermath of the vote remains dominated by great economic instability, the systematic dismantling of the opposition, the extension of government influence on the judicial system and the manipulation of the tragedy of migration to one's own advantage.

The political removal of Ayachi Zammel 

Saïed won without opponents.In fact, the only two who were able to run were never a real threat to the president's re-election: Zouhair Maghzaoui, Secretary General of the People's Movement and progressive ideas, is in fact a supporter of Saïed.The other candidate should have been Ayachi Zammel, former Liberal MP and his opponent.In addition to having practically disappeared in the boxes drawn on the walls on which the faces of the candidates are posted during the electoral campaign, Zammel found himself facing a series of obstacles that made him, in effect, invisible to the electorate.The attempt to “removal” of Zammel it became substantial with his incarceration on September 3rd, when the electoral campaign reached its most decisive phase.Zammel was convicted to 13 years and eight months for fraud, on charges of having falsified the documents necessary to complete the candidacy process, the same one that Saïed completely reformed with the approval of the country's new Constitution in 2022, which almost all the opposition does not recognize:“The court of first instance of Tunis 2 sentenced Zammel to 12 years in prison for four different cases related to the collection of signatures for his candidacy, and banned him from voting,” Zammel's lawyer said immediately after the sentence , his lawyer.His client condemned the decision of the Tunisian judiciary, calling it "politically motivated".

The authoritarian drift of democracy in Tunisia

The political elimination of Zammel is certainly not an isolated case, but it comes together in a project of progressive emptying of democracy started by Saïed shortly after his election in 2019 and strengthened above all with the 2021 coup d'état, following which the The current president has suspended parliament, dissolved the government, downsized the Superior Council of the Judiciary - the country's highest judicial body - and neutralized all his main political opponents.Among these there are above all Abir Moussi, popular leader at the head of the Free Desturian Party, and former prime minister Ahmed Hachani.With the entry into force of Constitution of 2022, Tunisian elections are effectively regulated by‘High toauthority thendependent for the Andlessons, a supposedly independent electoral commission cwhich many consider a direct expression of the president's will. The commission he declared “unsuitable” 14 of the 17 candidates who have applied to participate in Sunday's elections. A law approved by the government then prevented appeals from being made against this decision, effectively disempowering the administrative courts and putting an end to impartiality in the process of checking the requirements for political candidacies.Furthermore, the new Constitution has provided for very stringent conditions to make a citizen's candidacy for the presidential elections valid, namely the need to 10,000 signatures by as many voters and others ten signatures of parliamentarians or forty of representatives elected in the area.

Saïed's effect on Tunisia's economy

In 2019 Saïed was elected with 73 percent of the vote, establishing himself as a new figure, until then external to politics, and capable of reviving the country from corruption and the economic crisis.Five years later, while doubts about the possibility of a second mandate have disappeared, the president finds himself facing a public more and more hostile and impatient against the government's inability to address the country's numerous economic challenges.Looking at the data, we note that the perception of the electorate coincides with the real economic performance of Tunis.

According to a Arab Barometer survey, which deals with forming and communicating public opinion in Arab countries, around 40 percent of Tunisians consider the economy a crucial issue for the future of the country.And if 85 percent of the population defines the national economic policy as terrible, it goes without saying that this judgment also has repercussions on the president's popularity.The same economic indicators provide a negative verdict on Saïed's work.In 2019 unemployment was just over 17 percent, and although today it stands at 16 percent, it is increasing compared to 2022.The expected GDP growth for 2024 is stuck at 1.9 percent, a few percentage points above the 1.6 percent in 2019.Above all, inflation is weighing on the shoulders of Tunisians, having grown from 7.1 percent to 8.5 percent in 2023.

If on the level of economic policies the presidency Saïed was able to “benefit” from two major shocks global events that occurred one after the other – the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine – to which the president blamed much of the ineffectiveness of his economic recipe, as time went by this alibi has worn out.Saïed's Tunisia, a former jurist with economic experience and with few expert consultants, has failed to undertake the reforms necessary to lead the country out of recession, without addressing the issue of subsidies, the high spending on public sector salaries, the informal economy and the need for greater social policy interventions to address poverty.The sometimes difficult relationship with the largest trade union organization in the country also weighed on this, the General Tunisian Labor Union (UGTT), an institution that has existed since well before the democratic transition in Tunis.Furthermore, Russia and Ukraine's lack of grain and fuel imports ended up putting pressure on the country's reserves, leaving it without sufficient funds to purchase basic necessities such as flour and sugar.Added to this was the contraction in production in the agricultural sector due to a very serious drought and other impacts of climate change.Although Saïed has always placed the blame for the country's economic results on international crises, last month thousands of Tunisians took to the streets to protest.And it is precisely the economic challenges, even more than the political ones and the repression of dissent, that are inflaming the streets.

The political weapon of migration

It is not difficult to understand why the issue of migration towards Europe emerged as one of the main dossiers on Saïed's table during his first mandate.Although the number of people leaving Tunisia had been increasing since the middle of the last decade, the installation of the new president as government of the country coincided with a rapid increase in departures.In 2020, approximately 14,600 people left the Tunisian coast, 20,200 in 2021 and 32,300 in 2022.As of 2023, Tunisia has largely surpassed Libya as a departure point for people from many parts of Africa fleeing, for example, the insecurity of areas such as the Sahel and West Africa.It is estimated that in that year 62 percent of sea crossings departed from the Tunisian coast - corresponding to 97,667 people - compared to 33 percent coming from the neighboring state.Another factor that contributed to the increase in departures was certainly theexplode internal social unrest, nourished by the growing inequalities that today affect young Tunisians in particular.Many of them left the country either crossing the central Mediterranean or traveling through the Balkans.Second some estimates, approximately 40% of Tunisian migrants are aged between 15 and 29.Both the large cities and the rural areas of the country were affected by the departures and, emptied of the younger generations, have lost any prospect of future development.

But instead of preparing political recipes to address the issue of migration, Saïed's government has decided to use this emergency both to divert the population's attention from the lagging economy and as a foreign policy tool.First, he stirred popular resentment with statements that favoredemergence of a xenophobic sentiment towards migrants.In February 2023, addressing the National Security Council, he called for urgent action to stop the flow of sub-Saharan migrants, defined as "part of a plot to alter the demographic structure of Tunisia".The president's statement triggered conspiracy theories - similar to those of ethnic replacement fomented by political rhetoric in European countries - which have stigmatized sub-Saharan Africans.And from the emergence of such brutal rhetoric tothe emergence of real violence the step was short:violent attacks against sub-Saharan Africans have multiplied, with tens of thousands of people transferred to isolated areas such as the olive groves near El Amra, north of Sfax or near the Algerian and Libyan borders, where they are effectively abandoned without basic necessities need.

But it is the use of migratory flows at the service of foreign policy perhaps the most significant trait of Saïed's first presidency.It is precisely on the promise of migration management that Tunisia has closed important and profitable agreements with European governments, worried about the repercussions that new waves of migration would have on public opinion and, consequently, on polls.On this level, Tunis' advantageous position allowed Saïed to receive from Brussels 105 million euros of funding for migration, promised by the European Union in 2023 upon the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding which was attended by the President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.A figure to which 150 million euros of support for the general budget must be added, and overall they reach a significantly higher sum than those obtained by previous Tunisian governments.In addition to the economic benefit, which Tunis has allocated to intensify its patrolling efforts in its territorial waters, the most important victory for Saïed lies in having obtained political legitimacy from European governments, just as he was working to extinguish every breath of democracy in a country which, even more so after Sunday's vote, appears transfigured.