President Kais Saied’s de facto dissolution of parliament in July 2021, abandonment of the

constitution, and targeting of the opposition are clear signs that Tunisia is no longer a democracy and
has returned to the authoritarian playbook of Arab leaders past and present. I see three main reasons
for this abrupt end to Tunisia’s decade-old democracy: 1) the failure to accompany political reform
with socioeconomic gains for citizens; 2) the subsequent rise of populism; and 3) the mistakes of the
Islamic party. To move forward in Tunisia and the Arab world, prodemocratic forces must link
freedom, development, and social justice.

On 25 July 2021, after months of economic and public-health hardship induced by

covid-19, major protests erupted against the Tunisian government. That same evening,
President Kais Saied announced that he was dismissing Prime Minister Hichem
Mechichi, suspending parliament, rescinding the legal immunity of legislators, and
presiding over their public prosecution. Ironically, Saied contended that he was taking
these measures in the name of the 2014 Constitution, which prohibits such an
unchecked concentration of powers.

A month later, Saied announced the extension—for an indefinite period—of these

exceptional measures. On September 22, he issued a presidential decree affirming the
suspension of parliamentarians’ immunity, stating that legislation will be “made in the
form of decree law promulgated by the president,” and introducing a long list of
powers that would make any would-be dictator in the world envious. All these decrees
are in contradiction of the spirit and text of the 2014 Constitution, which is now de
facto abolished. This presidential decree marks the end of the democratic transition
that Tunisia embarked upon ten years ago after the ouster of longtime dictator Zine al-
Abidine Ben Ali.

About the Author

Moncef Marzouki was chosen by the Constituent Assembly of Tunisia in 2011 to serve as the
country’s president, an office he held until the end of 2014.

View all work by Moncef Marzouki

The de facto dissolution of parliament, the abandonment of the constitution, and the
arrests of political opponents and journalists are clear signs that Tunisia is no longer a
democracy and that it has returned to life under the old playbook of Arab dictators
past and present.
Why does the process of democratization in the Arab world seem so arduous? Is this
process bound to fail even in the country that seems to offer the most favorable
conditions for its success? Analysts have cited multiple causes ranging from economic
and social hardship to so-called cultural incompatibility, from the legacy of
colonialism to the intrusion of foreign powers in support of authoritarian conservation.

There is no single causal explanation for this failure, as the contexts are complex and
vary from country to country. I can only offer an explanation for the country whose
democratization process I have both observed and taken part in for more than forty
years. Drawing on my experience as head of the Tunisian League of Human Rights
(1989–94), leader of a democratic opposition party (2001–11), president of the
Republic (2011–14), and today, yet again, as an opponent of a nascent dictatorship, I
see three main reasons for the return of dictatorship in Tunisia. They are: 1) the
inability of the political system established in 2011 to link political rights and
socioeconomic rights; 2) the rise of populism; and 3) the negative role played by
feelings about political Islam.

Political and Economic Rights: The Missing

Link
In the early days of the 2011 uprising, the Tunisian middle class and the poorest
communities from the hinterland united to topple the Ben Ali regime. The middle
class could no longer tolerate being deprived of individual and collective freedoms
that its counterparts on the other side of the Mediterranean fully enjoyed. Those in the
poorest class could no longer tolerate being deprived of their socioeconomic rights,
especially in light of the scandalous corruption of the ruling elites.

Middle-class demands were quickly met. After 2011, Tunisians soon came to enjoy an
unprecedented level of political freedom. Freedoms of expression and association,
including freedom to hold public protests, promptly became the new normal. A few
months after the revolution, Tunisians freely elected a constituent assembly tasked
with the historic mission of designing a constitution for a new democratic state. Three
years later, on 27 January 2014, Tunisia adopted its first democratic constitution in
hopes of doing away with dictatorship for good.

Unfortunately, the poor, the unemployed, and the forgotten in the interior regions of
the country had less reason to welcome the establishment of the democratic state. Of
course, they too have benefited from the climate of freedom, but their expectation of a
better life economically has been destroyed. Worse, for some among the poorest, the
revolution has made an already precarious situation even grimmer.

The race to fulfill economic expectations as promptly as political expectations was

impossible to win, given the deep financial and economic crises that Tunisia
experienced in 2011. Decades of cronyism and corruption by the ruling families and
their entourages had left the country with an anemic economy. While corruption was
the primary cause of Tunisia’s economic ordeal, few analysts noticed that the much
needed anticorruption policy which the government (in which I took part)
implemented actually made the condition of society’s poorest members worse. For
example, when the state took back more than three-hundred corrupt businesses and
agricultural enterprises, this threw thousands of people out of work overnight. In order
to soften the economic blow of “draining the swamp,” the government needed a
massive influx of aid or cash. Tunisia did not have access to such resources.
Therefore, the anticorruption measures that the country’s economic system badly
needed ended up further worsening the immediate economic situation of those who
were already the most heavily burdened by the past regime’s cronyism.

I was committed to improving the economic condition of the vast majority of our
fellow citizens, as this was a key goal of the revolution. Working with the three-party
“troika” government that was in office during my presidency, I started to set up
antipoverty programs. In 2012, I sent advisors to Brazil to study the policies of
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which are rich in useful lessons for us. Time,
however, was not on our side. Such antipoverty programs would only show results in
the long term. In addition, the population’s frustration and disappointment increased
every day, proportional to their economic disarray.

Counterrevolutionary forces capitalized on this wave of discontent by making

grandiose promises during the legislative and presidential elections of 2014. The
election of my successor, Béji Caïd Essebsi, at the end of December 2014 did not
improve the economic situation, quite the contrary. The only law he passed in
parliament in 2017 was called the National Reconciliation Law. It was in fact an
amnesty law for corrupt businesspersons. This law contributed to strengthening
corruption and worsening political instability. Despite the creation of the country’s
first democratic constitution, and the strengthening of political institutions such as the
independent election commission, economic challenges created an ideal context for
the emergence of populism.