The announcement that Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi has been ousted and parliament closed down was announced by President Kaïs Saied in a televised statement on Sunday evening.
On Sunday, thousands of Tunisians had protested in several cities on what are believed to be government failures in the country hard hit by the pandemic.
- The people want the parliament to be dissolved, the crowd chanted.
Following the president's announcement that Parliament's work would be suspended for a month and the prime minister fired, tens of thousands of people remained on the streets to celebrate.
Television footage from the state television channel also shows how the president himself joined a jubilant crowd in the capital Tunis.
The military in parliament
During the night, military vehicles surrounded the parliament building, while people cheered and sang the national anthem, witnesses say.
Local media reports that the military also surrounded the state television house.
A new Prime Minister will be appointed, according to President Kaïs Saied, who has been involved in a political conflict with the ousted Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi for over a year.
The removal is a dramatic escalation of the political crisis in the country and the ruling Ennahda party believes it is a coup.
"What Kaïs Saied has done is a coup against the revolution and against the constitution," the party wrote on social media.
Calls for protests
The moderate Islamist party Ennahda was banned before the 2011 revolution, when President Ben Ali, who had ruled the country with an iron fist for over 20 years, fled.
Since then, Ennahda has been by far the most successful party.
In a video during the night, President Rached Ghannouchi urges people to take to the streets to protest President Saied's actions.
He also says that Parliament will ignore the president and continue to sit.
President Kaïs Saied is politically independent and, just like Parliament, was elected in the 2019 general election. Hichem Mechichi took office as Prime Minister last summer.