How the tyranny of Kais Saied went from tragedy to farce

The president of Tunisia, Kais Saied, won a second term.

In the days following October 6 choiceThis phrase did not surprise anyone but it disappointed many, going from gloomy prediction to the depressing reality.

The initial pronouncement by an obscure polling firm that Saied won by 89 percent of the vote perhaps provoked a laugh among Tunisians old enough to remember their last tyrant, Zine el Abidine Ben Aliwinning their last elections with exactly the same majority.

It was later officially announced as 91 percenta laughable attempt to show Saied’s power and popularity. But to paraphrase the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcherif you have to rig an election to tell everyone you’re powerful and popular, then you really aren’t.

Saied, 66, once joked who, like Charles de Gaulle, was too old to begin a new career as a dictator. However, now he follows, in a tragicomic way, the path of Ben Ali.

Like his predecessor, this will likely be Saied’s last election. The real question is whether this is because it will complete the Ben Ali tragedy or whether other forces will usurp it first.

‘Clumsy tyranny’

Curiously, for an election, the defining moments of the recent vote included everything but the result itself: the subordination of the electoral commission and the courts, the convoluted candidacy process, the detention of competition, the growing street protests that accumulate before the big day and the low participation in the vote itself: lower in the history of Tunisia for a presidential election.

Kais Saied will be known as a fierce authoritarian leader who relied on donations to prop up a failing economy.

These moments reinforce the narrative of Saied as a strong and weak man, a fitting title for a politician defined by his paradoxes.

Will be known as a fierce authoritarian leader who depended on donations to prop up a failing economy. He was a constitutional law professor who imposed a political project that was an even more dysfunctional version of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s much-maligned Jamahiriya.

He had promised not to become Europe’s border guard before doing so, damaging African relations and social cohesion in the process.

As president, Saied advocates for a strong state while neurotically reducing Tunisia’s administrative machinery to an ever-shrinking and ever-changing circle around the president.

Saied, pressured to participate in these elections by allies who repeatedly reminded him that he needed to preserve constitutional legitimacy, attempted to imitate his counterparts, the Egyptian government. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and from Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune strengthening and relegitimizing itself through prepared elections.

But fierce opposition to his clumsy tyranny and low turnout meant the event only weakened him.

This does not bode well for the crumbling state of Tunisia.

A weaker Saied means a more anxious Saied, who will more zealously gather all decision-making authority. Will continue to strip everything institutions of its independence, and Tunisia’s systemic problems will be faced by a less capable man.

And these problems are serious.

Tunisia is facing the biggest crisis in its history. debt payment obligations, as large principal payments on older debts are combined with high interest on recent loans. State-owned companies, the pillars of Tunisia’s employment, markets and subsidy systems, are also buckling under debt obligations.

Without a bailout, Saied relies on Tunisian banks for credit, ending any hope of growth and devaluing Tunisia’s currency.

As the situation worsens, Saied will continue to compensate for his lack of political virility with brutal repression and ruthless scapegoating.

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A recent virus video The image of a police officer warning protesters that this would be their last time on Tunisia’s main street, Habib Bourguiba Avenue, claiming that they are not responsible enough to protest, paints that future in a malevolent light.

It is also a grim reminder that, as Saied deconstructs Tunisia’s once proud bureaucracy, the security sector booms.

After all, Saied may have been the face of Tunisia’s authoritarian turn since 2021, but the Tunisian military delivered and sustained his coup.

The army remains Tunisia’s most powerful intelligence force, a legacy of its 2017 counterterrorism campaign.

As Saied’s cabinet becomes increasingly dysfunctional, his National Security Council make more decisions. And as the president’s prickly personality weakens Tunisia’s international relations, the Tunisian military association with the United States it deepens.

So, as Tunisia’s public and private sectors become poorer, military aid from Uncle Sam keeps Tunisia’s military in good shape.

Tunisia’s security sector welcomed Saied’s coup because it saw it as an opportunity to return to the familiar order of one man rule after the political chaos of pluralism.

Regional tensions

But now that Tunisia’s democracy is firmly boxed in, how long will the people tolerate Saied’s own chaos before feeling compelled to intervene once again?

These dynamics, which have condemned Tunisia to authoritarian devolution, are only exacerbated by the tangle of his neighbor.

The decision on which path Tunisia will take and what precedent it will set for the region depends on how much economic and institutional damage Saied causes before moving forward.

Tunisia’s turn has already borrowed a lot from AlgeriaThe playbook, from the use of the cover of COVID-19 impose a new oppressive order on the mechanisms to guarantee electoral results, and even increase military intrusion into domestic politics.

But Tunisia is not Algeria. It lacks its deep state and its oil wealth, which means Tunisia is not becoming a new Algeria. Tebboune is Saied’s mentor, and Algerian energy and financing keeps Tunisia’s lights on and its shelves stocked.

Tunisia’s authoritarian stability is therefore maintained by an Algiers that hopes Tunisia can be a useful force multiplier.

An early example of this could be seen in the revived Arab Maghreb Union. meeting Tebboune orchestrated in Tunisia last year, with the participation of Saied, Libya‘s Mohamed el-Menfi (and in particular, not Morocco).

This exposes Tunisia to increasing regional volatility as arms race between the spirals of Rabat and Algiers. Algeria threatens military interventions in Libya, as it feels threatened by a Russian-Emirati-Moroccan axis currently assaulting the Sahel.

Tunisia, once a torchbearer of “Arab spring“, is once again the torchbearer of new trends. She moved away from political liberalization and towards economic collapse, militarized authoritarianism and regional power struggles.

The decision on which path Tunisia will take and what precedent it will set for the region depends on how much economic and institutional damage Saied causes before moving forward.

What is not clear is whether the hand that pushes him comes from the army, from Algiers or from a Tunisian population finally forced to emerge from its post-revolutionary nihilism.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.