Tunisia: is President Kais Saied a new Gaddafi?

Vincent Hervouet 7:19 a.m., December 14, 2021

The Tunisian President extends the suspension of parliament for one year.

He announces a referendum in the summer.

Is it the headlong rush?

Tunisia looks like the Titanic.

But in his cabin, the captain rewrites the internal regulations.

This summer, Kaïs Saied took full power to "save the country from imminent peril".

Tunisians took to the streets to applaud him.

After ten years of palaver, they can no longer take the shenanigans of the Islamists of Enhada.

The lifting of parliamentary immunity was one of the consolations of a summer without tourists.

Above all, they are tired of the general slump, growth at half mast, inflation at 6%, unemployment at 18%, the deficit which is widening, the poverty which extends.

The political, economic and social crisis which brought the country to a halt.

The Covid which brings him to his knees.

Thousands of SMEs are about to file for bankruptcy.

Officials fear they will no longer receive their salary.

In the interior of the country, the demonstrations turn to riot.

The unions are overwhelmed, the political parties discredited.

And the government in the trap calls for help from the IMF for a new aid program, the 4th in ten years.

He needs four billion by the end of the year.

During this time, the President who has taken all the powers and who obviously does not know anything about the economy is concentrating on his project.

Alone in his palace, Robocop imagines a new constitution.

The ambassadors of the G7 countries and those of the European Union called on Friday for a rapid return to democratic institutions.

Donors are getting impatient.

Kais Saied has exhausted his credit.

This calendar of institutional reforms is his answer.

He wanted to unveil it next Friday.

Because ten years ago exactly, it all started that day with the sacrificial suicide of a young street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi.

The President wants to make it the anniversary of the revolution, instead of January 14, the day Ben Ali fled.

According to him, celebrating the fall of the tyrant is not appropriate because the revolution is still going on.

He says "unfortunately the revolution has been hijacked to exclude the people".

It's a familiar tune.

He adds that it is now necessary to achieve "the accomplishment of the revolutionary explosion".

It will be his great work.

This kind of arabesque reminds those who knew him of Colonel Gaddafi.

I interviewed him, it was his last TV.

The gaze fixed like Kaies Saied, he delivered the same kind of sentences, in the same tone… we vaguely understand but we stay very far from reality.

For Gaddafi, reality quickly imposed itself, a formidable armada gathered in the open sea.

For Kaies Saed, it is the social explosion that threatens.

He proposes to convene from January of popular consultations… To discuss constitutional and electoral amendments… And a referendum in the summer.

It also recalls the Libyan Jamahiriya, the state of the masses ... Gaddafi was proud of his popular committees, this direct democracy so superior to the stupid liberal system of parliamentary democracy.

The popular committee is the fixed idea of ​​the advisor to the Tunisian president, a still Marxist intellectual.

For another year, Kaies Saied wants to continue ruling by decree.

As he has also taken judicial power, he will continue to hunt down thieves, the rich and the corrupt, as he is already doing to 500 businessmen accused of embezzlement under Ben Ali.

On board the Titanic, the captain is staying the course.

He has put the crew to the bottom of the hold but is willing to consult the passengers to obtain a plebiscite.

All of this risks ending like the raft of the medusa.