The ‘slow coup’ taking Tunisia back to autocracy

On a recent Ramadan day in April, just before sundown when Muslims break their fast, dozens of Tunisian policemen swooped on the home of Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the country’s biggest political party and took the 81-year-old man to jail.

Ghannouchi, the former speaker of parliament and head of the moderately Islamist Nahda party, was charged a few days later with plotting against state security and ordered to remain in custody pending trial. The security services took over Nahda’s Tunis headquarters and banned meetings in its other offices. Several of the party’s other senior officials have also been detained.

The Islamist leader is the most high-profile politician to have been arrested since Kais Saied, Tunisia’s president, staged a power grab in 2021 and began dismantling the country’s young democracy. In recent weeks, more than a dozen politicians, activists, judges, trade unionists and a leading independent editor have also been arrested in what Amnesty International has called “a politically motivated witch hunt”. Many fear it is the end of democracy in the country.

“We have been living through a slow coup as Saied has sliced away at democracy over the past two years,” says Hamza Meddeb, fellow at Carnegie Middle East Centre. “The arrest of Ghannouchi is a big signal that we have reached the end of pluralism.”

Tunisia’s revolt against dictatorship in 2011 was the spark that set off a series of popular uprisings across the Arab world. For much of the following decade, it was regarded as a rare example of an Arab democracy — buffeted by problems, defective but still pluralist. Now it is returning to autocracy under Saied, a former constitutional law professor who won power in 2019 promising to clean up corruption.

Often described as stubborn and “non-transactional”, he has cast himself as Tunisia’s saviour, on a mission to end graft and protect the country from “conspiracies” by enemies at home and abroad. A populist who makes clear he believes only he knows what is right for the country, Saied never hid his contempt for parliamentary democracy. His “toxic rhetoric”, as one diplomat described it, has served as mood music as the president has tightened his grip on all levers of power in the past two years.

Meanwhile, the economy has worsened under his leadership and European officials and analysts warn of an impending meltdown. Economists predict that Tunisia will default on its debt. Saied offers fiery diatribes against corruption but no strategies to deal with the deepening crisis, critics say.

In April, he appeared to reject the terms of a much-awaited $1.9bn bailout from the IMF, saying that “diktats from abroad” that would increase poverty were “unacceptable” and that Tunisians had to rely on themselves.

Josep Borrell, the EU diplomacy chief, warned in March the North African country was heading towards economic collapse, an assessment echoed by Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, who said the Tunisian economy risks “falling off the deep end” without IMF help. Diplomats say there is a rising threat to social stability.

The country’s woes are causing increasing concern in Europe, especially Italy, whose outlying island of Lampedusa is just 113km from Tunisia. The continent’s leaders fear an outpouring of migrants if the Tunisian economy sinks deeper into crisis.

“If they don’t go for the IMF plan, I don’t know what is the alternative,” says a western diplomat in the country. “They have already exhausted other sources of borrowing. There is no plan B. You can feel there is something febrile. We are expecting something to spark and it will be economically driven.” 

Promising beginnings

As Libya fragmented, Egypt fell back under the control of its army and Syria descended into brutal civil war, Tunisia stood out as the only successful democratic transformation to have emerged from the uprisings of 2011.

Tunisia’s Islamists under Ghannouchi, along with its secular groups, including elites from the regime ousted in 2011, managed to agree a compromise that kept the democratic process on track after political assassinations and widespread unrest threatened to derail it in 2013. The civil society groups which mediated the agreement received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 for what was seen as “a historic bargain.”

But the progress towards democracy was not accompanied by economic recovery. Political upheaval was followed by increasingly deadly terrorist attacks that had a severe impact on the country’s tourism industry. Coronavirus and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine further undermined the economy. Squabbling politicians and a series of weak, ineffectual coalition governments were unable to address the problems. As the biggest group in parliament for most of the years since 2011, Nahda received the largest share of the blame for the failing economy.

It was against this backdrop that Saied, standing as an independent candidate, won a landslide victory in the 2019 presidential election. But two years into his term, amid growing political paralysis and a rise in coronavirus deaths, he shuttered parliament and suspended the constitution. He has since redrafted it to remove checks and balances on presidential powers and dissolved the democratically elected parliament, replacing it with a rubber-stamp assembly elected under rules designed to marginalise political parties and concentrate power in his hands.

Over the past two years, Saied’s rhetoric has fuelled an increasingly sinister political atmosphere, human rights groups and diplomats charge. Monologues broadcast on his Facebook page decry all critics as “criminals” and “traitors”. He has accused detained politicians and activists of terrorism, plotting to assassinate him, and even of hoarding goods to drive up prices and “harm the Tunisian people”. In chilling remarks, he said they have been proven guilty by “history before the courts”.

Dalila Ben Mbarek, a lawyer representing nine of the detainees and a sister of one of them, Jaouhar ben Mbarek, a founder of opposition movement Citizens against the Coup, says investigators have provided no evidence to support charges against the defendants, and that there was only the testimonies of two anonymous witnesses in case files.

“This is all politically motivated,” she says. “Saied wants no opposition. He considers himself a prophet charged with saving Tunisia from the grip of parties, civil society and businessmen. Like God who has a direct relationship with Muslims, Saied doesn’t want any intermediaries between him and the people.”

Several of those arrested had been trying to organise an opposition alliance to restore the democratic order. “There was an attempt [by the jailed politicians] to build a broad platform gathering parties from Nahda to groups on the left, which is important vis-à-vis the international community,” says Meddeb.

A day after Ghannouchi’s arrest, Saied told the security services their duty was to protect the state from those “who have tried . . . to explode [it] from within and turn it into a collection of provinces . . . This is their custom and there is no room for those in a law-based state.” His comments have led to speculation that the party could be banned.

The US has described Ghannouchi’s arrest as “a troubling escalation” and a contravention of guarantees of freedom of speech in Tunisia’s constitution. The EU expressed its “great concern.” Saied dismisses all international criticism as “blatant external interference.”

In recent weeks, Saied has also triggered a crisis in relations with the African Union, a regional body of which Tunisia is a member, by alleging there was a plot to settle sub-Saharan migrants in the country to “change its demographic make-up” and cut it off from the Islamic and Arab parts of its identity. His remarks triggered street attacks against migrants, many of whom were forced out of their homes and jobs. They also brought hundreds of Tunisians on to the streets in protest.

“You had teenagers attacking migrants and saying the president said they had come to occupy us,” says Chaima Bouhlel, a political commentator and activist. “Saied’s words provided an outlet for violence in a very tense situation. There is also now an absence of any structure that could balance this out. In a democratic situation, parliament would have objected.”

As dangerous rhetoric fills the air and the political space shrinks, the civil society organisations that thrived after the revolution say they expect to become the next targets of the president’s ire.

Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesman for the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, a research and advocacy organisation, says social media accounts which claim they are pro-Saied have accused them of being agents and traitors. “We also receive threatening messages privately which accuse us of serving foreign agendas,” he adds. “Pressures on us have increased since we opposed the president’s February speech against migrants.”

Ben Amor argues that Saied was shaken by the low turnout of 11 per cent in the parliamentary elections that were held over two rounds in December and January, and by the poor performance of the economy. “So it has been in his interest to shore up his popularity by appearing as a saviour from a new enemy [the migrants] that he himself has created, and by speaking of a conspiracy that targets the very existence of Tunisians.”

Inflation, shortages, unemployment

As Tunisia’s economic problems deepened following the outbreak of the Ukraine war last year, its government struggled to find foreign currency to pay for crucial imports, leading to frequent shortages of staples such as sugar, oil and flour. Inflation has been hovering at around 11 per cent. The official unemployment rate is 15.2 per cent but joblessness among the young is far higher, at around 40 per cent.

Without IMF assistance, Tunisia could expect even more severe economic woes, analysts say. Capital Economics, the London-based consultancy, has warned that as foreign exchange reserves dwindle, the value of the Tunisian dinar could fall by as much as 30 per cent against the euro. “This will not only cause inflation to skyrocket and push the economy towards a painful recession, but it would also cement our long-held view that Tunisia is heading towards a sovereign default,” it said in a note.

A deal struck with the IMF last October, which remains stalled because of Saied’s reservations over required reforms, would unlock loans from other donors. The Tunisian government has agreed to a programme including subsidy cuts and limiting the civil service wage bill, but the president has refused to endorse it. On two previous occasions in the past decade, Tunisia has turned to the IMF but failed to adhere to agreed reforms. Analysts suggest Saied fears implementing such measures because they could destabilise his rule and make him unpopular.

The IMF says it remains “engaged” with Tunisia and that once “programme requisites were in place a date would be set for the lender’s board to approve the loan”. Italy, whose rightwing government has been alarmed by a tenfold increase in the number of migrants arriving on its shores on boats from Tunisia in the first three months of this year, has also been lobbying to secure financial support for the North African country.

Antonio Tajani, the Italian foreign minister said last month that he would work on behalf of Tunisia in negotiations with the IMF. He repeated an earlier Italian proposal that the loan should be delivered in two tranches and not be fully dependent on all reforms being in place. “For us, the fundamental point is to guarantee the stability of Tunisia,” Tajani said. But the EU insists its support for Tunisia is conditional on agreement with the IMF.

Popular, for now

The president’s constant talk of corruption as Tunisia drifts towards economic disaster has alarmed business leaders, even those who supported his intervention to end the democratic experiment in 2021. “Tunisia needs economic vision and I don’t see one,” says one senior businessman, who did not want to be identified.

“We are not against accountability, which should be the work of the courts,” he adds. “There are many in the country who work hard and within the law. We don’t need these daily accusations of corruption. We should improve the atmosphere and give confidence to people.”

But Saied remains popular among many Tunisians, who trust his professorial aura and approve of his moves against a political class they continue to distrust. Naziha Tarhouni, a retired dressmaker in Tadamon, a poor area of Tunis, complains about the prohibitive prices of eggs, meat and chickens — but says she still admires the president.

“He is a heavyweight,” she says. “He is open-minded, educated, a teacher, calm and wise in all he does. It is enough he disbanded parliament. As for those he arrested, they deserve prison and more.”

In a supermarket in the same district, staff report shortages of coffee, sugar, subsidised oil, semolina, milk and rice. But the president’s talk of conspiracies appeared to have seeped down to his supporters. Mohamed Alalou, who works in a grocery store, says the disappearances of certain goods was deliberate. “European countries are behind it and also some Tunisian political parties because they are traitors,” he asserts.

But as the economic crisis becomes more stifling, some say popular support could begin to turn against the president and force a change. There has been speculation for more than a year that Saied, who is not a traditional strongman from the military, might be pushed aside if economic conditions deteriorate to the point that people rise up against him.

“Tunisia is approaching a moment of truth,” says Meddeb. “The coalition in power [allied with Saied] is not clear, but he is backed by the army and the interior ministry. I think they supported him because they saw no alternative. It is a marriage of convenience but, if the country is on the brink of collapse, their position may change.”

Whether Saied goes or stays, many young Tunisians have already made up their minds; they intend to join the rising flow of those seeking new lives in Europe. Mohamed Ali, a 22-year-old who has one year left studying for a degree in information technology, plans to board a smuggler’s boat to Europe once he has graduated. “I want to go anywhere except Tunisia. Whether it is difficult or easy, I will go,” he says. “Saied did a good thing. But it might take 50 years for the economy here to improve. For me, I just want to eat. Look at the price of bananas.”

Data visualisation by Keith Fray