[ CSMonitor ] ‘Coup’ in Tunisia: Why Arab Spring’s last light is dimming
With a single announcement, the last embers of the once-blazing Arab Spring were dimmed by what some are calling a constitutional coup in the Arab world’s lone democracy.
On Sunday, Tunisia’s populist president, Kais Saied, seized emergency powers for what he pledged would be a 30-day interim period. He dismissed the prime minister and defense minister, “froze” parliament, and mobilized army units to bar elected representatives from the parliament building.
By using the emergency measure, Mr. Saied, a former constitutional law professor, upended a carefully devised system that had divided powers to avoid a backslide into a strongman dictatorship such as that of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in the Arab Spring.
Under Tunisia’s semi-presidential system, the directly elected president oversees the army and foreign affairs, while the parliament-appointed prime minister is the head of government, an arrangement that President Saied had long bristled at.
With Mr. Saied’s constitutionally dubious power grab, he now is the executive authority, has control of both army and the police, and is acting as a “public prosecutor,” vaguely promising to hold “corrupt” persons “to account” for “looting the state’s resources.”
Tunisia is suffering one of the highest infection rates in the world, at 8,000 daily new cases among its 12 million population. On July 8, its then-health minister declared that the health system “collapsed.”
Hospitals have experienced shortages of oxygen and beds, COVID-19 patients have spent days in the streets waiting to be admitted to hospitals, and the bodies of deceased COVID-19 patients have gone unburied. Officials say some 18,000 Tunisians have died from the pandemic.
In recent weeks, Mr. Saied had mobilized the army to take over the pandemic response, capitalizing on what he described as the government’s “criminal” mishandling of the crisis.
He recruited nurses into the army and dispatched them to virus-stricken communities. He worked diplomatic lines to receive donations of oxygen, medical supplies, and vaccines.
That helped cement the support of many Tunisians for more centralized rule.
Tunisia has seen 11 governments in 10 years, swerving from Islamist to technocrat to neoliberal, none of which had the ability to enact far-reaching reforms.
Youth unemployment has hovered between 35% and 40% for the past decade, with many choosing to risk their lives and migrate to Europe by boat. More than 12,800 illegal arrivals in Italy from Tunisia were registered in 2020 alone.
The laws parliament did pass included austerity measures to secure IMF funding, leading to government hiring freezes, the devaluation of the Tunisian dinar, and a dramatic increase in the cost of goods and food – further fueling discontent.
With the loss of tourism, Tunisia’s economy shrank by 8.6% last year, and a further 3% in the first quarter of 2021. The pandemic pushed unemployment to 17.8%.
