He deviated from the constitution and turned against the political system. The Tunisian president is in the crosshairs of the parties ’criticism

Tunisian President Kais Saied is facing accusations by major parties of deviating from the spirit of the constitution and the existing political system, after his prime minister-designate chose to form a government of non-political competencies that cut the parties' participation in power.

According to many, the government in charge of forming the government, Hisham al-Mashishi, was not talking about the people’s loss of confidence in the political elites, and his move to form a government of non-partisan competencies, regardless of the declared position of the President of the Republic, Qais Saeed, who rejects the entire party system and the existing political system in the country.

The president who supports the application of popular democracy and is governed by the local government system has often held the parliamentarians responsible for the social and economic failure that afflicts the country.

Saeed had previously waved the dissolution of Parliament against the background of escalating disputes between parliamentary blocs, which reached the point of disrupting its work, stressing at the time that it had all legal means to end what he described as the chaos inside it.

Party leaders and political figures had directed harsh criticism of al-Mishshi and Qais Saeed, warning against the attempt to bully the parties and to overthrow the current political system, and to transfer the decision-making power from Parliament to the Carthage Palace.

Posted by Seif Eddine Makhlouf on Tuesday, 11 August 2020

Saeed's position in moving towards forming a government of independent competencies contrasts with his previous statements before he took the presidency, when he described, in an interview with the local website "Espace Manager", issued in French on July 27, 2014, the technocratic government "with a lie and a great betrayal", criticizing the then government of the President Former Minister Mahdi Gomaa.

Saeed said that "there is no technocratic government and any member of the government can only be a politician," noting in the same dialogue that the government of competencies that led the country's transitional phase was imposed by the political crisis at the time.

Rebellion against the constitution
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, the head of the Dignity Coalition, Saif al-Din Makhlouf, accused the president of the republic of "rebelling against the constitution and the parliamentary system," by ignoring the proposals of the parties and excluding them from the next government.

Makhlouf emphasized his bloc's categorical rejection of the Mechanically's choice to go towards a government of independent competencies and ignoring the balances within parliament, directing his supporters to prepare for early legislative elections if the Mechanically-appointed government did not gain confidence in Parliament.

For his part, the head of the Heart of Tunisia Party, Nabil Karoui, described in local media statements the Mishichi government as "the government of the president of the republic," calling on Qais Saeed to assume his responsibility and present his program, orientation and economic vision.

The leader of the Ennahda Movement, Rafiq Abd al-Salam, considered that the absence of the focus of the Constitutional Court, which is supposed to play an arbitration role in the event of any dispute between the executive and the legislature, opened the door to this conflict about the nature of the existing political system in the country, stressing the need for the prime minister's options to reflect In charge of the parliamentary majority and electoral balances.

"The principle of things is that the president of the republic is the guarantor of the constitution, and that is why we had alerted us to the dangers of turning back the clock by talking again about changing the political system," he told Al-Jazeera Net.

Abdel Salam stressed that his party is not in a quarrel, neither with the President of the Republic, nor with the Prime Minister-designate, but the difference lies in the approach about the nature of the next government.

The debasement of the parties is a danger to the democratic transition process ... Forming a government made up of technocrats only would be a mistake, in my opinion. The government ...

Posted by Hichem Ajbouni Ajbouni on Saturday, 8 Aug 2020

He concluded by saying, "We are faced with two options, either we tell the president of the republic this is your government and you must take responsibility for your choices, or the parties meet and announce their rejection of this government and not give it confidence and proceed to legislative elections, we are the biggest beneficiaries of it despite the high costs that the people will bear."

The Prime Minister-designate, with President Qais Saeed behind him, went to exclude all parties from power, even those who supported him, such as the Democratic Current and the People’s Movement, pushing its leaders to break their silence and warn about what they described as the "policy of collective punishment of parties."

Representative of the Democratic Current Nabil Haji admitted in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net that the current political scene is referring to the presidential system, "where the President of the Republic has become the owner of the initiative to assign the Prime Minister Hisham Al-Mishishi to form a government independent of all parties," according to him.

Al-Hajji pointed out that this situation places the parties in a major dilemma in taking a decision to grant the government confidence or drop it in Parliament, in the absence of any clear vision of its work program and the composition of its ministers.

A golden opportunity
On the other hand, the intensity of the political tensions and conflict within the parliament between the parties, according to observers, represented a golden opportunity that President Qais Saeed had seized with his legal advisor Hisham Al-Mishishi to head the government, and hold the strings of the political game and combine the two heads of the executive authority in the Carthage Palace and the Kasbah.

In this context, researcher and academic Sami Braham says to Al-Jazeera Net that Qais Saeed does not believe in the existing political system imposed by the constitution, but in return he promised to ensure respect for the constitution.

He stressed that "the president of the republic, and contrary to what is said, did not carry out a robbery of the powers of the parties when he removed them from the Mechanically-appointed government. Rather, it was the one that gave up its powers that were granted to it by the constitution when it failed more than once to form governments. Partisan ".

He indicated that the President of the Republic has a valuable opportunity to implement the provisions of the constitution in a literal manner and to exploit the loopholes left by the parties to implement his political vision in how to manage public affairs.

Braham added, "What is blamed on the president is that he did not take into account in choosing the most capable personality the spirit of the constitution and the extent of the Meshchi's ability to assemble the parliamentary majority, but rather put everyone under the status quo."

Braham indicated that the technocrat government is not qualified to address the dire social and economic reality, in the absence of a parliamentary belt to support it, expressing his fear that its passage will be only a lifeline for the parties to avoid the scenario of dissolving parliament and thus withdraw confidence from the government at the first opportunity.

Article 89 of the constitution gives the president of the republic the power to dissolve parliament and call early legislative elections, in case the people's representatives do not give confidence in the Presbyterian government.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister-designate continues his consultations with the parliamentary blocs, where he met the President of the Free Constitutional Constitution Abeer Moussa, who unusually expressed her willingness to interact positively and put forward her party’s vision in relation to the next government, provided that the Ennahda movement continues to be excluded from it.