In Bir Ali Ben Khlifa, a town a few kilometers from Sfax, the economic center of Tunisia, the inhabitants are still waiting for change.

Youth flee, often clandestinely, because of lack of work. Maktouf, a day laborer, lost one of his sons two years ago in the sinking of an illegal boat that was leaving for Europe.

"My son did a training: he worked as a plumber, repairer of air conditioners, refrigerator repairer, but in the end the work was always scarce, and in addition, it was paid badly or not at all," says this father bereaved.

Graduates without work

In the city's cafes, unemployed graduates are eating away. Some have been unemployed since the 2011 revolution. Out of 600,000 unemployed in Tunisia, more than 200,000 have studied. "Corruption has developed a lot since the revolution and we have nothing without giving something, which is why the hope of young people has tarnished since the revolution", describes Ramzi who studied to become a teacher in philosophy, but who has never taught.

In the capital, too, older workers are suffering from the crisis. Between 2011 and 2015, more than 1,500 industrial companies closed their doors. Employees of a company specializing in the manufacture of diapers have been unemployed for three months. Their boss vanished without explanation. While voting in the 2014 elections, for many, politics is no longer a priority, as summarized by Mourad: "When you find yourself without pay, without any visibility, without anything, I believe that politics is your last concern. "

Eight years after the revolution, the issue of elections is more than ever economic and social, according to Skander Ounaies, professor of economics: "If we do not solve the unemployment crisis, sooner or later, we will have a social explosion. reinvesting in all that is infrastructure, look at recent water cuts or power cuts, why this happens, because the public investment is dead, the state is not investing anymore. "

With unemployment stagnating at 15.3% and more than 9,000 social movements in 2018, candidates and parties are expected to turn around during the presidential and legislative elections scheduled respectively on September 15 and October 6.