On the evening of June 30, or “Joan” as Tunisians call it, Tunisian parliamentarians prepared for a heated session that included the discussion of several projects, including a draft law on the organization of domestic work, and a draft basic law on approving the regulation of electoral district standards and determining number of seats. But the most important project was a basic law to approve an agreement between the Tunisian government and the Qatar Fund for Development on the opening of an office for the Qatari Fund in Tunisia. MP Abir Moussa, head of the controversial Free Constitutional Party, who is hostile to the Tunisian revolution, protested against the law's discussion, describing the agreement as "colonial."
The session began, and with it, the efforts of Abeer Moussa and members of her parliamentary bloc began to disrupt the work of Parliament, which angered MP Al-Sahbi Smara, who could not control himself and beat her and punched her several times, before a number of MPs prevented him and her.
On the same night, Abeer Moussa was beaten again, but this time by another deputy, Seif El-Din Makhlouf, so that the Tunisian parliament, which is considered the most open state institution, turned into a "wrestling arena" among its deputies.
The events inside the Tunisian parliament that night presented a microcosm of the developments of the Tunisian political crisis resulting from the dispute over the powers between the presidency and parliament, which threatens to undermine state institutions, disrupt life and threaten civil peace.
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The deputy in the Tunisian parliament from the Karama bloc, Sahbi Smara slaps the head of the Free Constitutional Party bloc, Abeer Moussa# Tunisia pic.twitter.com/Kp0J9Pk0fW
— February Channel (@FebruaryChannel) June 30, 2021
The situation outside Parliament was not far from the state of conflict, as “Tunisians”, as the public pronounced it, are now suffering from both due to the exacerbation of the Corona outbreak crisis to an unprecedented degree and the resulting collapse of the health sector, in conjunction with economic stagnation, high unemployment rates and the rise in poverty rates.
Between the death of a young man under arrest, or a child dragged on the street after being stripped of his clothes by security forces in the Sidi Hussein area, or the death of a policeman with corona in front of a hospital in Kairouan, or the imprisonment of a street vendor, Tunisians are stuck between these news as if it came from 2010 But everyone realizes that the situation is now more complicated than the situation that led to the outbreak of the Tunisian revolution more than ten years ago, as Tunisia did not know at that time open institutions, an elected government and parliament, nor did it know a democratic path to such a degree at the same time.
“Some politicians are of the same strain as the new Corona virus, they twist and turn as they want.” With this phrase taken from the bitter reality of the epidemic whose strains are striking the world one after the other, Tunisian President Kais Saied chose to attack the politicians in his country against the backdrop of the political crisis that has been going on for several months, but the Tunisian president ignored at the same time talking about the catastrophic situation of the epidemic whose most severe wave is hitting Tunisia. These days. The number of infections and deaths has risen to an unprecedented level, and the Tunisian Ministry of Health announced on July 6 that it had recorded the highest daily record for the number of HIV infections, since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country in March 2020, with nearly 8,000 cases.
Saeed's controversial statement was one of several fiery statements in which he attacked his political opponents and has become his own approach during the recent period. After every political incident the country goes through, the president used to come out with words that only exacerbate the situation; Sometimes he accuses Tunisian political parties of seeking to "remove him from power, even with assassination," and at other times he threatens to use the constitution to put an end to everything he considers an abuse that threatens the fall of the state, as if he were a political commentator or writer in an official newspaper, not the highest position in the state itself.
The current political crisis in Tunisia has its roots in 2019, which saw presidential elections that landed Kais Saied, a 61-year-old constitutional law professor, at Carthage Palace. In October of the same year, the Islamist Ennahda party, the largest in parliament, tried to pass the government of Habib Jemli and did not succeed in that, to surface differences between the two positions of political weight in Tunisia, the "parliament" headed by the Ennahda party, and the "presidency" Represented by Qais Saeed, disagreements that heralded an intense struggle to determine the influence of institutions in the fledgling democracy. Although such struggles have long characterized budding democracies from the United States to the smallest European countries, the consequences of this violent throes of institutional democracy in Tunisia appear to be taking a toll on the country's social fabric and economic structure.
The ball returned to Qais Saeed's court to choose an alternative to Habib Jemli in order to form the government, which created a political climate in which debates over the issue of powers in particular aggravated.
However, these interactions were not new in any case, as Tunisia witnessed them repeatedly after its revolution in 2011. The issue of controlling the powers of the three presidencies was often raised;
The Presidency of the Majlis (Parliament), the Presidency of the Government, and the Presidency of the Republic.
Habib Jamali
For example, the period of the late President Beji Caid Essebsi witnessed a struggle of this kind. His presidency was seen as a political stage in which pro-old regime figures and parties returned to the fore in 2014, a few years after the regime was overthrown. Under the government of Habib Essid, which was granted the confidence of Parliament in February 2015, something like a coup took place against the semi-parliamentary system due to some attempts to convert it towards a presidential system. The crisis quickly worsened with the arrival of the government of Youssef Chahed, when Chahed wanted to take his powers away from the head of state to enter into a confrontation with the Tunisian president himself.
The crisis of powers reappeared in a more violent manner with the government of Hisham al-Mashishi, which was sworn in in September 2020. While the Ennahda movement wanted to appoint a prime minister loyal to the parliamentary majority, the Tunisian president wanted a prime minister loyal to him. In other words, while Ennahda supported granting more powers to the government, and thus parliament, the Tunisian president wanted to establish a presidential system instead of the current mixed system that places most of the powers in the hands of the prime minister appointed by the ruling coalition.
The most prominent clash occurred in mid-January, when Qais Saeed refused to ratify a cabinet reshuffle proposed by Al-Mashishi and approved by the Tunisian Parliament, refusing to invite the new ministers to take the constitutional oath before him, considering that the amendment was marred by "violations", which Al-Mashishi did not accept. . Simultaneously, Saeed's statements that his powers as commander-in-chief of the armed forces also include the internal security forces and not only the army, caused him to escalate his dispute with the Meshishi government over powers.
Since the outbreak of the crisis, there have been many initiatives seeking to ease the tension and get out of the dispute over the powers between the president and the prime minister, Hisham al-Mashishi.
The first of these was the initiative of appeasement and mediation between the political parties, which was carried out by the "Tunisian General Labor Union", the largest trade union organization in Tunisia. The union launched the "National Dialogue" initiative in early December in order to get out of the economic and social crises in the country, and one of the most important Its provisions establish a "body of wise men led by independent national figures to get out of the crisis."
Noureddine Taboubi, Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labor Union.
However, the initiative passed unnoticed by everyone without the desired effect. Last March, the Tunisian president surprised his people with his proposal to organize a national dialogue with the broad participation of young people, in order to crystallize proposals and demands that proceed from the local level towards the national, a proposal considered by the political elite as a circumvention. On the dialogue initiative put forward by the Labor Union, and an attempt by Qais Saeed to prolong the crisis, embarrass his rivals in power, and monopolize the political process.
About a month later, another surprise came to Tunisians when a number of retired Tunisian army officers launched a political initiative called "The Last Hope". To get out of the political crisis, the officers suggest that the president “call both the presidents of the House of Representatives and the government for an urgent meeting at the Republic Palace to end the estrangement, restore normal contacts between the three presidencies and examine the stakes and requirements of the stage.” The officers also suggested to the president “to deliver a synthesis speech in the House of Representatives attended by all political parties, followed by an immediate cessation of all campaigns of exchanging violence and distortion, respecting the political parties, and the commitment of all to postpone engaging in contentious political issues until the Corona epidemic is eliminated and the specter of bankruptcy is removed.” . Of course, this initiative caused widespread controversy in Tunisia due to the sensitivity of Tunisian society to the interference of military leaders in political affairs.
In mid-June, the Tunisian president surprised everyone again by calling for a dialogue to agree on a new political system and amend the 2014 constitution - which emanated from the National Constituent Assembly - which he said was riddled with locks and obstacles. But the call that appeared as a gesture towards a solution backfired and brought the crisis back to ground zero, as it was clear from Qais Saeed’s words that he was paving the way for changing the constitution and amending the country’s political system after he questioned the national dialogue that took place in 2013, describing it as “it was not a dialogue and did not He was never patriotic."
With the protracted crisis in Tunisia, calls began to surface demanding the exclusion of those with escalating differences, on top of which a group of political parties, organizations, associations and national figures announced the formation of a "referendum front" in order to change the political and electoral system in the country. This group believes that in order to remedy the situation there is a need to organize a popular referendum in which the Tunisian people will be asked about the type of political system to be followed, given that the people are the "original authority holder" in the end. The initiative’s owners affirmed during a press conference on June 28 that “there is a united front that will be open to all Tunisians, national figures, and all components of civil and political society, and its goal is a people’s referendum on the political system, whether presidential or parliamentary, and on the electoral system, whether relative or absolute, in Two sessions."
#Tunisia..the formation of a "referendum front" to change the political system
The front consists of associations, personalities and two parties, and calls for the organization of a popular referendum, according to what was announced in a press conference https://t.co/mFz56SDbOK
— ANADOLU AGENCY (EN) (@aa_arabic) June 28, 2021
But there are those who went beyond the referendum on the political system, by calling for early legislative and presidential elections as a way out of the crisis. Former President Moncef Marzouki topped the list of political figures who demanded the necessity of holding early presidential and legislative elections to ensure a solution to the political and constitutional crisis that the country lives. Although both the Tunisian President and the Ennahda Party have expressed their support for the proposal to hold early presidential and legislative elections if a national dialogue is disrupted to get out of the political crisis, Tunisian researcher and legal Karim Marzouki believes that there is no solution to the crisis in Tunisia except from within the constitution. Al-Marzouki adds that "the outlets for going to a referendum or early elections are very limited by the constitution, and it requires consensus between the parties to the crisis, and it is not possible to go to a referendum on the political system or amend the constitution without the presence of the Constitutional Court, which is still inoperative today."
Speaking to Meydan, Marzouki says that the early legislative and presidential elections, regardless of the legal possibility of holding them, will not get Tunisia out of this zero-sum circle of conflict, and that the effective and necessary solution today is an agreement between the parliamentary majority and the Presidency of the Republic on a new government supported by both or At least able to work with Parliament and the Presidency to ensure minimal governmental and political stability. Only through this consensus and not by reproducing the election wheel, Tunisia can stand on its own two feet to address the economic crisis that threatens the state's financial situation and threatens to escalate social tension in an unprecedented manner.
But in light of the difficulty of predicting what will happen to the political situation in Tunisia, where Said does not have any direct powers to change the constitution and then change the political system in the country, and no party in Parliament also has the same tools of change, perhaps going to early elections is a mandatory option that leads to To the emergence of a new consensus, its supporters say, while opponents of its implementation point to its political and economic cost in a country experiencing a severe financial crisis, which may cause more partisan and political dispersal in a country whose citizens can no longer wait for the fruits of politics.