2024-10-07 05:44:27
His critics are in prison
Decline of a bearer of hope
Updated 10/06/2024 – 10:00 p.mReading time: 3 min.
He was once a democratic hope, but now he is virtually an autocrat who suppresses all opposition: Kais Saied is facing a new term in office in Tunisia.
When Kais Saied was elected president of Tunisia five years ago, he was seen as a beacon of hope. He was re-elected on Sunday – as an authoritarian ruler who silences his opponents. “He believes he has a revolutionary divine mission that fulfills the will of the people,” says Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights (FTDES).
The 66-year-old apparently thought it was unnecessary to campaign. He contented himself with a few visits to poor neighborhoods, where he denounced alleged “conspiracies of Tunisia’s enemies.” Saied only has a few competitors left: the electoral authorities refused to allow his most important rivals to run, so he only had two opposing candidates.
In 2019, an overwhelming majority of 73 percent voted for Saied in a democratic election. “The people want” was his motto at the time – based on the slogan of the Arab Spring. In 2011, mass protests for more democracy overthrew long-term ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
In 2021, Saied dissolved parliament – ostensibly to resolve political and economic blockages and to better combat corruption. A year later, he expanded his power even further: he dismissed the Supreme Council of Judges and appointed the head of the electoral authority according to his ideas.
In the summer of 2022, Saied finally had a referendum on a constitutional change that practically secured him the role of sole ruler. Critics see parallels to Ben Ali’s rule. In three years, Saied changed the head of government three times and dozens of ministers.
From February 2023, politicians and business people who had opposed the head of state were arrested, followed in 2024 by the arrests of well-known trade unionists, civil rights activists and journalists. Most of them are still in prison.
Five years after Saied took office, the human rights organization Amnesty International confirmed in Tunisia “a worrying decline in fundamental rights in the country where the Arab Spring was born” and spoke of an “authoritarian turn” that has destroyed the achievements of the revolution.
Saied also prohibits any outside interference. He claims Tunisian human rights groups received “huge sums” from abroad aimed at undermining the country. Last year he rejected a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the heavily indebted Tunisian economy because he did not want to accept “foreign dictates.”
Nevertheless, Tunisia remains a strategically important partner in the region for the United States and France – its main financial supporters and arms suppliers. And the EU concluded a migration pact with Tunisia in 2023 to restrict immigration across the Mediterranean.
Saied was born in Beni Khiar in eastern Tunisia in 1958 and grew up in a middle-class family. He was a professor of constitutional law and is married to the judge Ichraf Chebil, with whom he has two daughters and a son. He is considered very conservative, especially when it comes to homosexuality. Saied loves classical Arabic music and calligraphy, which is why he often writes speeches and letters in ink and quill pen.
He became known in 2011 when he spoke on television about constitutional law. As president, however, Saied is less communicative. He rarely speaks to journalists. He often limits his public statements to angry video monologues in a suit and tie, which the presidential office publishes on the online network Facebook.
The writer Youssef Seddik had visited Saied regularly before the 2019 election. At the time, he says, he was “impressed by his kindness and his ability to listen.” Today, however, “he speaks to the people in a distorted language that no one understands except himself.”