Kais Saied and the demise of democracy

Abstract

This spring, Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Tunisian opposition and founder of Islamist party Ennahdha, was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison for allegedly using the word ’tyrant’ in a funeral eulogy. His arrest is only the latest in a series of escalating crackdowns on dissent and political opposition by Tunisian President Kais Saied. Since executing a presidential coup in July 2021, Saied has emerged as the region’s latest authoritarian strongman. Some analysts cite Saied’s populist anti-institutionalism and conspiracy-driven political paranoia as reminiscent of Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez, and Silvio Berlusconi (Cordall 2023). Others place him the company of Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – whose security officers were advising Saied and were present when former Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi was beaten at the Presidential Palace on 25 July (Middle East Eye 2021). Although often compared in the early days after the revolutions, Tunisia and Egypt’s paths drastically diverged only two years later when Sisi overthrew Egypt’s first democratically elected president just one year after his election. Nearly ten years later, however, Saied appears to be following Sisi’s hyper-presidentialist playbook on seising and consolidating power, systematically dismantling Tunisia’s painstakingly built democratic institutions in the process.