How the tyranny of Kais Saied turned from tragedy to farce

Tunisian President Kais Saied has achieved a victory second term.

In the days that followed October 6 electionthis sentence surprised no one, but disappointed many, from grim prediction to depressing reality.

The first ruling from an obscure polling station with which Saied won 89 percent The mood may have provoked a chuckle from Tunisians old enough to remember their last tyrant, Zine el Abidine Ben Aliwinning his last election with exactly the same majority.

It was later officially announced as 91 percenta ridiculous attempt to show Saied’s power and popularity. But to paraphrase the late British Prime Minister Margaret ThatcherIf you have to organize elections to tell everyone that you are powerful and popular, then you really aren’t.

Saied, who is 66, once joked that, like Charles de Gaulle, he was too old to start a new career as a dictator. Yet he now tragicomically trudges along Ben Ali’s path.

Like his predecessor, this will likely be Saied’s last election. The real question is whether this is because he will complete Ben Ali’s tragedy or whether other forces will take him over first.

‘Awkward tyranny’

Curiously, the defining moments of recent election voting include everything but the outcome itself: the subordination of the election election commission and the courts, the complicated candidacy process, the arrest of the competition, the growing street protests that preceded the big day, and the poor turnout at the vote itself lowest in Tunisian history for presidential elections.

Kais Saied will be known as a fierce authoritarian leader who relied on subsidies to prop up a failing economy

These moments reinforce the story of Saied as a weak, strong man – a fitting title for a politician defined by his paradoxes.

He will be known as a fierce one authoritarian leader who relied on donations to prop up a failing economy. A lecturer in constitutional law, he imposed a political project that was an even more dysfunctional version of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s much-maligned Jamahiriya.

He had promised not to become Europe’s border guard until he had done so, which had damaged African relations social cohesion in the process.

As president, Saied advocates a strong state while simultaneously reducing Tunisia’s administrative machine to an increasingly smaller, ever-changing circle around the president.

Saied, pressured into these elections by allies who repeatedly reminded him of the need to maintain constitutional legitimacy, sought to emulate his counterparts, the Egyptian government. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and that of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune by entrenching and re-legitimizing itself through staged elections.

But the fierce resistance to his clumsy tyranny and the low turnout only served to weaken him.

This does not bode well for Tunisia’s crumbling state.

A weaker Said means a more fearful Said, who will more jealously gather all the decision-making power. He will continue to strip everything institutions of their independence, and Tunisia’s systemic problems will be confronted by one less capable man.

And these problems are serious.

Tunisia is facing its biggest crisis ever debt repayment obligations, as large repayments on older debts are accompanied by high interest payments on recent loans. State-owned enterprises, the pillars of Tunisian employment, marketplaces and subsidy systems, are also buckling under their debt obligations.

Without a bailout, Saïed will rely on Tunisian banks for credit, killing any hope for growth and devaluing the Tunisian currency.

As the situation worsens, Saied will continue to compensate for his lack of political virility with brutal repression and ruthless scapegoating.

A recent viral one video of a police officer warning protesters that this would be their last time on Tunis’ main thoroughfare, Habib Bourguiba Avenue, and claiming they are not responsible enough to protest, maliciously portrays that future.

It is also an ominous reminder that as Saied deconstructs Tunisia’s once-proud bureaucracy, the security sector boom.

Said may have been the face of Tunisia’s authoritarian turn since 2021, but Tunisia’s military carried out and sustained his coup.

The military remains Tunisia’s most powerful intelligence force, a legacy of the 2017 counter-terrorism crackdown.

As Saied’s cabinet becomes increasingly dysfunctional, his own becomes increasingly dysfunctional National Security Council makes more decisions. And while the president’s irritable personality is weakening Tunisia’s international relations, as well as Tunisia’s military partnership with the US.

So as Tunisia’s public and private sectors grow poorer, Uncle Sam’s military aid is keeping Tunisia’s military afloat.

The Tunisian security sector embraced Saied’s coup because they saw it as an opportunity to return to the familiar order of the state one-man rule after the political chaos of pluralism.

Regional tensions

But now that democracy in Tunisia is safely in a straitjacket, how long will the people tolerate the chaos of Saied’s own brand before they feel compelled to intervene again?

This dynamic, which has condemned Tunisia to authoritarian decentralization, is only exacerbated by the crisis involvement from his neighbor.

The decision on which path Tunisia will take and what precedent it will set for the region will depend on how much economic and institutional damage Saied does before he moves on.

Tunisia, in turn, has already borrowed a lot Algeria‘s playbook, from using the cover of COVID-19 to impose a new oppressive order on the mechanisms to guarantee election results, and even to increase military intrusion into domestic politics.

But Tunisia is not Algeria. It lacks its deep state and oil wealth, meaning Tunisia will not become a new Algeria. Tebboune is Saied’s mentor, and Algerian energy and financing keep the lights on in Tunisia and the shelves stocked.

Tunisia’s authoritarian stability is therefore maintained by the Algiers who hope that Tunisia can be a useful force multiplier.

An early example of this can be seen in the revived Union of the Arab Maghreb meeting Tebboune orchestrated last year in Tunis, with Saied, Libya‘s Mohamed el-Menfi (and especially no Morocco).

This exposes Tunisia to increasing regional volatility arms race between Rabat and Algiers spirals. Algeria is threatening military intervention in Libya because it feels threatened by an alleged Russian-Emirate-Moroccan axis currently storming the Sahel.

Tunisia, once the torchbearer of the “Arab SpringThe generation is once again the torchbearer of new trends. It has moved away from political liberalization towards economic collapse, militarized authoritarianism and regional power struggles.

The decision on which path Tunisia will take and what precedent it will set for the region will depend on how much economic and institutional damage Saied does before he moves on.

What remains unclear is whether the hand pushing him comes from the army, from Algiers or from a Tunisian population finally driven out of its post-revolutionary nihilism.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.