Tunisian President Kais Saied said - in a speech to a crowd in the city of Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the Tunisian revolution, on Monday evening - that transitional provisions have been put in place and that exceptional measures will continue, two days after a demonstration in the center of the capital calling for an end to the exceptional measures taken by the president.
Saeed said that his country is witnessing several fabricated crises, but "the challenge posed by some is met only by a greater challenge," as he put it, threatening those parties, whom he did not name, that "our legal missiles are on their platforms, and one signal is enough to strike them in their depths."
The president renewed his defense of his exceptional decisions taken last July, and said, "There was no democratic transition, but rather a transition from one corruption to another, and it was necessary to resort to Article 80 of the constitution."
Exceptional measures continue
Saeed stressed that the exceptional measures will continue, and that a prime minister will be assigned on the basis of transitional provisions, and he also announced that he will present a new election law in the country.
He affirmed his determination to move in that direction, saying that the danger "is still lurking, and I cannot leave the state like a puppet moving from behind the curtain," he said.
Hundreds of Tunisians demonstrated last Saturday in Habib Bourguiba Street in the capital, calling for the restoration of the country's constitution and the activation of constitutional institutions, especially Parliament, which was suspended following the exceptional measures announced by Saied on July 25.
The protesters raised slogans calling for the preservation of the gains of the Tunisian revolution, especially the freedoms that they say are under threat in light of the security and military prosecutions of a number of the president's opponents.
These protests - the largest since the measures taken by Said about two months ago - followed calls from Tunisian activists to protest;
Rejecting what they call a coup against the legitimate institutions and the country's constitution.