Since July 25, 2021, Tunisia has been in a state of self-coup. President Kais Saied, elected two years earlier, suspended parliament that summer, had the prime minister resign, and issued two presidential decrees that consolidated all executive powers in his hands – rather than sharing them with the prime minister, as outlined in the 2014 Constitution.
Self-coups in democratic regimes often lead to autocratic rule. These are softer, more subtle forms of coups – where a sitting leader uses sudden and irregular (i.e., illegal or unconstitutional) measures to seize power or dismantle checks and balances. In such cases, the chief executive takes extreme steps to eliminate, or render powerless, other branches of government, including the legislature and judiciary. They also include situations where the chief executive simply assumes extraordinary powers.
Whether successful or merely attempted, self-coups are becoming more frequent – from Tunisia to the Sahel and beyond. In the last decade alone, there have been nine self-coups, part of 41 recorded between 1950-2022, of which 30 were successful.
While the military remains the decisive factor in determining the outcome of the power grab, cohesive regional and international responses can play a crucial role in reversing self-coups. In Tunisia’s case, while it is hard to counter-factually argue that a more forceful diplomatic response from European or the US would have reversed Saied’s actions, the lack of regional and international condemnation and the absence of any measure taken to sanction the presidential power takeover have implicitly legitimized the gradual expansion of presidential prerogatives.
The only semi-consolidated post-revolutionary democratic regime has been eviscerated, and Tunisia is now classified as only partly free, with worsening political and civil freedoms. On October 6, 2024, Tunisians will go to the polls for new presidential elections. Aside from the incumbent, there are only two candidates on the ballot: Zouhair Maghzaoui, a former pan-Arabist member of parliament, and Ayachi Zammel, a former MP from a liberal party, currently imprisoned on charges of signature fraud.
Several other, more prominent and palatable candidates have been excluded by the electoral authority, ISIE. Although the administrative court accepted their appeal for reinstatement, ISIE refused to enforce the court’s decision on September 2, 2024, de facto hampering their candidature. The uneventful electoral campaign recently saw the president release a video featuring a virulent speech, in which he blamed both domestic and foreign actors for alleged plots to cause the state’s implosion and deflected the blame for Tunisia’s ongoing social and economic malaise.
According to Levitsky & Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die, in recent years democracies are subverted slowly, and the process tends to kick off by an increasingly autocratic leader using legalistic measures justified by alleged democratic purposes. Drawing on the work of Linz, they identify four key traits of authoritarian leaders: they reject the rules of the democratic game, delegitimize political adversaries, accommodate or encourage violence, and are ready to curtail civil rights, including press freedom. The presence of even one of these behaviors should set off alarm bells, and President Kais Saied has not been immune to displaying or encouraging some of them.
In Tunisia, the political space has significantly contracted over the past three years. President Kais Saied has gradually but steadily tightened his grip on power, while the political opposition remains fragmented, and civil society has been severely weakened by repeated waves of repression. The broad application of the 2015 counter-terrorism law and the new disinformation law (Decree Law 54) has led to the imprisonment of several politicians, activists, and journalists.
Since 2022, a draft bill has circulated in parliament and has been revisited since late 2023, aiming to impose a straitjacket to existing and future NGOs and civil society associations. The bill would limit their creation, restrict their sources of funding, and bar their representatives from standing in elections for at least three years since leaving the organization. This demonstrates the president’s slow, gradual, and legalistic approach to asphyxiating public space and undermining checks and balances.
Over the past 3 years, fundamental counterweights to presidential overreach have been systematically eroded. This has occurred not only with the president’s expanding formal powers, bolstered by the July 2022 constitutional reform, but also indirectly through decrees that limit the mandate and autonomy of democratic institutions. Key members of these institutions have been dismissed or sidelined. In February 2022, the High Judicial Council (Conseil judiciaire supreme) was dissolved, and in June of the same year, the president dismissed 57 judges. The autonomy of the independent electoral authority has also been significantly compromised, following Decree Law No. 22, adopted in May 2022, which grants the president the power to appoint and dismiss its members – a power he has already exercised.
The pillars of Rosanvallon’s counter-democracy – oversight, prevention, and judgment, which are essential for safeguarding democracy – have been and are being gradually hollowed out. Oversight refers to the citizens’ ability to monitor members of parliament and elected officials, prevention to the veto power of social organizations and trade unions, and judgment to the independence of the judiciary vis-à-vis the political power. While the erosion of the first and especially the third pillar does not yet place Tunisia in 2024 within the category of fully authoritarian regimes, the country is undeniably in a state of self-coup, led by an autocrat. As noted by Redissi, he is driven by an anti-statist view of institutions and is guided by an alleged mythology of “the people” within a radical, revolutionary, conservative vision of Tunisia and its institutions.
Counter-coup mobilization remains limited. This is partly due to the deterrent effect of Decree 54 on cybercrime, which has severely restricted freedom of expression by broadening the scope of accusations related to “conspiracy against state security.” Combined with waves of arrests and trials targeting journalists, this has reduced the space for the vibrant, open political debate that characterized the post-revolutionary period. This is also due to a lack of political mobilization in the wake of the fragmentation of the political spectrum, with a weak parliament elected with an extremely low turnout and devoid of key post-revolutionary parties. Many of their leaders have been politically emasculated – Ennahda’s 20 leaders are imprisoned, and prominent figures like Abir Moussi, President Saied’s main rival, are also behind bars. When meetings were banned at Ennahda’s offices in April 2023, the opposition coalition National Salvation Front was similarly shuttered.
While political counter-mobilization has struggled to mount significant resistance against the democratic backslide, a newly formed network, the Reseau Tunisien pour les Droits et les Libertés, which unites a dozen NGOs and eight political parties, is trying to pick up the baton where politics failed. So far, however, its demonstration in central Tunis on September 13 – just a day before the presidential campaign began – attracted only a few thousand people.
It might be that, once again, the economic conditions may shape the pace and path of future protests. Despite Cassandra calls of imminent financial collapse over the past couple of years, Tunisia has navigated a very slow post-pandemic economic recovery, addressing hard financial challenges, and limited foreign reserves by cutting imports, relaunching tourism, and securing smaller loans with fewer strings attached – unlike the 2 billion dollar IMF “monstre-loan,” which is tied to deep subsidy cuts and the privatization of several public enterprises. This approach runs directly counter to the president’s vision of a statist, dirigiste economy which he believes should be guided by the state, or more precisely, the political elite. Once re-elected, the president is likely to usher in a new phase, where economic experimentation will dictate the political economy and trajectory of the country’s socio-economic rights. The success of this phase will be crucial for consolidating the president’s power.
Cover photo: An election poster of the presidential candidate Kais Saied is pasted on a wall along a street in Ariana, Tunisia, on September 29, 2024, during the presidential election campaign. (Photo by Chedly Ben Ibrahim / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP.)
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