Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed has formalized the date of July 25 for the holding of a referendum on an amended constitution, supposed to mark the advent of a "new Republic", despite criticism denouncing a botched process, likely to establish a autocracy.

The date of July 25, 2022, which Kaïs Saïed had unilaterally set in December, was formalized in a presidential decree "calling voters to a referendum on a draft new Constitution of the Tunisian Republic", published Wednesday, May 25 in the Journal official.

After months of political deadlock, the Tunisian president, democratically elected at the end of 2019, assumed full powers on July 25, 2021 by dismissing the Prime Minister and suspending the Parliament dominated by the Islamist-inspired party Ennahda, his pet peeve. , before disbanding it at the end of March.

"National dialogue" excluding parties

In a roadmap supposed to get the country out of the political crisis, unveiled in December, Kaïs Saïed had announced a referendum on constitutional amendments on July 25, 2022, before legislative elections on December 17.

An online popular consultation organized between January and March, and very largely shunned, voted for the establishment of a presidential regime that Kaïs Saïed calls for, in place of the current hybrid system, source of recurring conflicts between the executive branches. and legislative.

The president on Friday appointed a lawyer close to him, Sadok Belaïd, at the head of a commission responsible for drafting the new constitution through a "national dialogue", from which political parties have been excluded.

Invited to this dialogue, the powerful Tunisian trade union center UGTT, a key player on the Tunisian political scene, refuses to participate. 

For the UGTT, the dialogue in the format proposed by Kaïs Saïed aims to "endorse the conclusions decided unilaterally in advance and [to] force them through as accomplished facts."

In the same edition of the Official Journal, Kaïs Saïed published a second decree stipulating that the text of the new constitution that he advocates would be published "no later than June 30", before being submitted to a referendum.

By these decisions, he ignores the criticisms of his opponents who accuse him of seeking to restore an autocracy in the country which was in 2011 the cradle of the Arab Spring by overthrowing the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

With AFP

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