On May 23, Middle East Eye published a report written by David Hearst and Areeb Ullah titled "Tunisia's Top Secret Presidential Document Outlines a Plan for a Constitutional Dictatorship." Leaked on May 13, but according to a source close to advisers to Tunisian President Kais Saied, the plan has been under discussion since last April before it was presented to the president. The document, which was classified as "absolutely secret", about two months ago, describes the content of what the Tunisian President announced a few days ago, but with minor amendments that do not change the essence of the matter, which is the establishment of what was called a "constitutional dictatorship." And it became clear now in July that the document Which was denied validity in May is actually true, and it may have been scheduled to be implemented before that, but its implementation was delayed after it was leaked with amendments to it.
On July 22, the former Dubai Police Chief, Dhahi Khalfan, posted a comment on his personal Twitter account, saying, "Good news! A strong new blow is coming to the Brotherhood." Former law professor Qais Saeed, former law professor, had previously expressed in 2013 on Tunisian television his fear that The next Tunisian constitution (which was subsequently approved in 2014) eats “an ass or a donkey of the first donkey breed,” in reference to a section of the play Ghuraba, in which the artist Duraid Laham talks about the constitution of the farmhouse that the donkey ate!
This data raises 3 things:
The first:
how the Tunisian parties, especially the Ennahda movement, dealt with the leaked document, which described what it is now clear that was going to take place two months later, and whether they believed at that time the version presented by the president and his department about the leaked document, and that it was just a preliminary proposal. This is something that brings us back to the issue of managing the political conflict and the position of “good faith” in it, in which Islamists seem to continue to engage in their political struggles, and whether good faith can prevent the development of multiple scenarios that include various possibilities so that there are no surprises.
The second:
that the step taken by the Tunisian president provided it with internal and external arrangements, which reminds us of the July coup in Egypt, whose passage involved a great deal of negligence in reading the political scene, without asserting that Tunisia would be an exact copy of Egypt, but the agenda Dictatorship and the enemies of revolutions are the same, although they are subject to different struggles and conditions, but they are also similar.
The third:
Saeed’s fear of the constitution from a donkey or donkey that he eats reflects, in fact, Saeed’s own position on the constitution approved in Tunisia 2014, and it embodies the dual guardianship over it;
As a president on the one hand, and as a former professor of law on the other, his comments on describing his decisions as a coup show that he sees that he is the only guardian of the constitution and the true interpreter of it, away from state institutions and legal experts, including law professor Ayyad Ben Achour, who considered Said's decisions a "coup against the constitution in the fullest sense of the word", due to the lack of essential and formal conditions for the application of Article 80 of the constitution, on which the president claimed to rely in his decisions.
Article 80 of the Tunisian Constitution includes an essential and a formal requirement:
The essential condition is summarized in the text of the Constitution; He talks about a situation where "the country is exposed to an imminent danger threatening the nation's entity, the country's security, or its independence, with which the normal functioning of the state's wheels is impossible." That is, it refers to a compound condition or two conditions that are related to one another, which does not exist in the reality of Tunisia at present. Ayyad said that "the first person responsible for arresting the country is the President of the Republic, and the crisis in the country has not reached a state of imminent danger that threatens the entity of the state." .
As for the formal condition, it is represented in the president consulting the heads of government and parliament, and informing the head of the Constitutional Court of the decision to resort to Article 80, which did not happen; On the one hand, the president himself had previously refused to sign the decision to form the Constitutional Court, and thanks to him it does not exist. On the other hand, the heads of government and parliament were not consulted, which means that the decision was taken completely individually and in the interest of the individual decision-maker himself, which is contrary to the text of the Constitution first. Contrary to moral standards, because the president has an interest in this, and the principle of non-conflict of interests must be considered here (conflict of interests). With these decisions, the president has become the president of the republic, the head of government, and the attorney general, and the constitutional text on which he was based does not clarify exceptional measures aimed at "" Ensuring the return to the regular work of the public authorities as soon as possible.” That is, there is no clear work map, but rather the decisions are open to an unknown and by the decisions of one individual in which he disrupted all state institutions!
Moreover, the text of the constitution speaks of that in the aforementioned case, “the Assembly of the Representatives of the People is in permanent session throughout this period,” which means that the Assembly cannot be dissolved and its course cannot be frozen, in contrast to Saeed’s decision, which abolished all powers and institutions and seized them on his own. Rather, he added to it something that he had never before been appointed as a public prosecutor, meaning that he became the opponent and the arbiter at the same time. These introductions led Iyadh to the conclusion that President Saeed’s performance “was an expression of a plan to stop and overthrow the constitution.”
Politically, these decisions were opposed by most of the parliamentary blocs in Tunisia and received only marginal support.
It was opposed by the Ennahda Movement (53 deputies out of 217), the Qalb Tounes bloc (29 deputies), the Democratic Current bloc (22 deputies) and the Dignity Coalition bloc (18 seats), while the People's Movement supported it (15 deputies). Generalizations here and there and forcing them to enter into a false “Islamic-secular” dichotomy only;
Whereas the political conflict in Tunisia is broader than that, and it is a struggle between democracy and dictatorship or the tendency to restore it.
Popularly, the decisions were supported by a popular group that supports the person of the president, and is resentful of the political elite, especially the Ennahda movement, against which there is a state of discontent due to several reasons that are not discussed here, but it seems that some of them are justified and some are not.
Its participation rate in the government and parliament has been decreasing over the past decade.
Supporters of the president's decisions confuse two things that should be separated:
The first:
Abandoning individual rule, violating the constitution, and returning to the year of Ben Ali by assembling the powers in the hands of one person, even if he was elected, because this means eroding the gains of the Tunisian revolution and the democratic process that was achieved in Tunisia during the past decade.
The second:
Disagreement or rivalry with the Ennahda movement or with the existing political elite that is entrusted with the crisis situation in Tunisia, which provokes the indignation of various segments of the people, the latest of which is the Corona crisis that is afflicting the country. But it must be clarified that the president, in person and in his position, is an integral part of the impasse that afflicts the country and is not immune from it. Last April, Saied halted parliamentary efforts to establish a constitutional court, an essential element in the Tunisian revolution that would strengthen democracy, and in January The second is Saied's refusal to take the oath of ministers chosen by the current prime minister in a cabinet reshuffle; Arguing that the individuals involved have a conflict of interest. The decisions taken by Saeed, which facilitate for him complete control of the country and the exclusiveness of all powers, is evidence of his being a party and a political opponent and not an arbiter between the parties. He rejected all initiatives of political dialogue because his goal - it seems - is two things:Amending the constitution, which began to be questioned before it was approved, as previously, canceling the legislative elections and amending the electoral system to liquidate his opponents, especially from the Ennahda movement.
We are, therefore, facing a complex scene in which the constitutional, the political, and the popular are mixed. The current predicament in Tunisia has two sides: the first is political; Given that the reasons for making the president’s decisions are due to the state of political division that prevails in the country, on which Chapter 80 of the Constitution has been dropped, and the second: popular in the sense that there are popular segments who are angry at the political elite because of the general situation in the country, and despite these two aspects, it is not The centrality of the third face (and it must be the first) can be neglected and it is constitutional, and all faces must be under it; It is the supreme reference that everyone must abide by and submit to, and not be the subject of political disagreement or partisan strife; Especially since it reflects the achievements of the Tunisian revolution. Failure to disengage between these faces and their ranks would abort Tunisian democracy.
There is an important point that we must stop at, and it is to avoid slipping into political positions whose legitimacy is based only on ideological hatred or political animosity, such as supporting Said’s decisions simply because they are against the Ennahda movement or because they will afflict the ruling political elite, or because they will lead to the exclusion of Islamists from power because such Legitimacy is neither a moral nor a political legitimacy, but rather expresses a political adolescence and will be against the public interest of the country first, and it will harm the gains of democracy that have been achieved in Tunisia so far.
The problem with this situation is twofold:
First:
He seeks change just for the sake of change, without any calculations or guarantees so that this change leads to what is better, whether in terms of individual or public interest, and then changing the existing evils by any means will lead to worse evils than what is happening now because the legitimacy of change does not It is based only on hatred or animosity and not on reasonable and institutional interest calculations according to clear and disciplined criteria.
The second:
It confuses the intent with the means that leads to the goal, i.e. it sacrifices the idea of the criteria governing any change so that it is more useful and beneficial, and fulfills the goal for which the change is requested in order to achieve.
It is not possible to accept an absolute individual rule just to achieve a change in the ruling political elite, regardless of our position on it and its performance.
Especially since the head of state is an authentic part of this elite that is the subject of popular discontent and anger, and he is a broken part of it!
I am not discussing here political differences or party rivalries and rivalries, because I am concerned with preserving the only democratic achievement that was achieved in the Arab world during the Arab Spring. This means two things:
The first: that the disagreement here is about an issue related to the system of government itself, not a political party dispute between the parties, and there is no sane person who can sacrifice the democratic system to achieve a minor goal of getting rid of political or ideological opponents.
Second: Preserving, maintaining and strengthening the Tunisian democratic achievement is a necessary requirement for all Arab democrats, and therefore it is not only an internal Tunisian affair, but an Arab affair. Especially since it is the only remaining example so far of disrupting the thesis of Arab democratic exception, and the allegations that democratic intransigence in the Arab world is due to the natures of Arabs and Muslims, which are related to ethnic, cultural and religious dimensions, while the reality is that they are related to a state of strife that afflicted Arab political systems Hence, it is working to make this scabies permeate the entire environment, because the existence of a correct and healthy system embarrasses it and disturbs the peace of its dictatorship.
When we distinguish between the intent and its means, we refer to a crucial issue in the democratic system, which considers the means themselves an essential part of the democratic process itself, because institutional work (which is in contrast to individual rule) is in itself a good and valuable thing, and therefore it must be preserved whatever its consequences. Because it is the only guarantor of the interest of the group and the interest of all alike, and there is no alternative to it except the individual action that establishes dictatorship and absolute corruption.