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    Support for Tunisian President Slipping After Parliament Vote

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    Turnout was meager in two rounds of voting for a Parliament stripped of much of its power, with most political parties barred from the elections.Tunisia, the only Arab country to emerge from the Arab Spring protests of more than a decade ago with a democracy, has not had a Parliament since its president suspended the assembly and established one-man rule in July 2021.But when the names of the North African country’s newly elected members of Parliament were finally announced on Tuesday, after two rounds of voting, it did not seem like a comeback for democracy. In the end, perhaps what the election results signaled most strongly was fast-fading support for President Kais Saied.Only 11.4 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the runoff on Sunday, only slightly more than the 11.2 percent in the first round — the lowest turnout in any global election in decades, according to Max Gallien, a political scientist at Britain’s Institute of Development Studies. At least two of the president’s loudest supporters lost their bids, though several others won.“The loss of people who claim to be close to Saied is another indicator of the shallowness of the political project he is advancing: no vision, no strategy, no team,” said Youssef Cherif, a political analyst who directs the Columbia Global Centers in Tunis.Banking on his initial widespread popularity, Mr. Saied rewrote Tunisia’s post-Arab Spring Constitution last year, giving himself sweeping authority and demoting Parliament to an advisory body, stripping much of its power. He also issued a new electoral law banning political parties from involvement in the election, so that voters chose individual candidates rather than voting for party lists as they had done in previous elections.As a result, Parliament was set to be a patchwork of individuals without party affiliations, platforms or agendas to hold them together. The very fact that the winners participated, however, signaled a degree of support for the president: It meant they were willing to at least lend some legitimacy to his new program. Opposition groups boycotted the election.The parliamentary elections were widely seen as a gauge of what Tunisians thought of his plans, and of whether Mr. Saied was sincere about preserving Tunisian democracy, as he had pledged to do. On both, critics and analysts charged, Mr. Saied fell flat.In some districts, only one candidate ran, negating the need for any runoff at all. Women won just 25 of the assembly’s 161 seats, according to Tunisia’s electoral authority, compared with 68 who held seats in 2014. Mr. Saied now controls the elections authority after replacing its formerly independent board.The election of a new Parliament was supposed to be the next step in Mr. Saied’s plan to remake the country’s political system, one that he claims will be a truer, more direct democracy. In reality, it has put nearly all power in his hands, unchecked.A photo released by the Tunisian presidency shows President Kais Saied at a polling station during the first round of parliamentary elections in Tunis in December.Tunisian Presidency, via ia ReutersFar from saving the country from economic and political crises, as many hoped he would after he seized power, the president has offered few solutions as Tunisia staggers through a downturn that has left shelves bare of basics such as sugar and bottled water, families hard-pressed to feed themselves and the government unable to pay salaries.Disenchantment with Mr. Saied’s handling of the economy appeared to be a major factor in the meager turnout in July’s constitutional referendum, where about 30 percent of voters approved the president’s new Constitution.Mr. Saied had called on supporters to vote for the new charter, but after announcing the date of the parliamentary election — the first round was in December — Mr. Saied did little to promote the vote.That, Mr. Cherif said, “confirms that he sees little interest in parliamentary democracy.”Mr. Saied has never been shy about his contempt for Parliament.“Approximately 90 percent didn’t take part in voting because the Parliament, for them, doesn’t mean anything anymore,” he said in a meeting with his prime minister on Monday, according to a video his office posted on Facebook.He had a point.Police officers outside a polling station in Tunis on Sunday.Mohamed Messara/EPA, via ShutterstockMany Tunisians continue to blame the political parties who dominated Parliament over the last decade for stymying Mr. Saied’s reforms, giving him an opening to ban them from the electoral process. Anti-Saied protests remain limited.Though reliable polling is also scarce, the president’s political opponents appear even more unpopular than he is, leaving Tunisians stuck between two unpalatable choices.Still, growing numbers have expressed fear of Mr. Saied’s increasing authoritarianism as the president prosecutes and jails critics. A political activist, Chaima Issa, was questioned last week by a military judge over critical comments she made about Mr. Saied on the radio, while a former prime minister from a major opposition party, Ali Laarayedh, was imprisoned in December.Yet the outcry over Mr. Saied’s rollback of rights and freedoms Tunisians won after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising has remained limited — apart from members of the opposition, who used the flop of the elections to call for Mr. Saied’s resignation and early presidential elections to replace him.“The results show that 89 percent of Tunisians have ignored this charade,” Ahmed Najib Chebbi, a veteran politician who leads the National Salvation Front, a coalition of opposition factions, said at a news conference after the runoff vote. More

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      As Tunisia Drifts Farther From Democracy, Voters Shun Election

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      Turnout in Saturday’s parliamentary elections was just over 11 percent, reflecting deep skepticism that politics can solve the North African nation’s grave governmental and economic crises.A feeble turnout in Tunisia’s inconclusive parliamentary elections over the weekend drew opposition calls for the country’s strongman president to step down, with critics calling it yet another step in the North African’s nation descent from the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings to an increasingly autocratic state.Just over 11 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the first election since President Kais Saied orchestrated a sweeping power grab in 2021, suspending the Parliament and sidelining political parties. As Tunisia drifts farther and farther from its decade-long experiment with democracy, opponents say the president now relies on elections only to add a sheen of legitimacy to his actions.“No one can find a single party of importance across the political spectrum or a civil society organization that sees Saturday’s election as anything other than a sham vote to create a Potemkin parliament,” said Monica Marks, an assistant professor of Middle East politics at New York University Abu Dhabi.The largest opposition coalition, the Salvation Front, called for protests and sit-ins, saying the low turnout indicated that Mr. Saied lacked legitimacy and should leave office. Abir Moussi, the head of the opposition Free Constitutional Party, also called on the president to step down, saying that the vast majority of Tunisians had “rejected Saied’s plan.”The election was the first step in reinstating the Parliament, but with drastically reduced powers that will transform it essentially into an advisory body. It cannot fire the government or remove the president, and bills that Mr. Saied presents will take priority over those proposed by lawmakers. He also barred political parties from participating in elections, making it difficult to decipher the political leanings of the mostly unknown candidates who won seats.Ms. Marks described the candidates that were able to run under the new election law “a shambolic grab bag of individual esoteric loyalists, jobless people who simply wanted a salary and random community members.”President Kais Saied preparing to cast his ballot at a polling station on Saturday. Mr. Saied was elected in 2019 and concentrated power in his own hands in 2021, sidelining Parliament and political parties.Tunisian Presidential Press ServiceShe called Mr. Saied’s ruling style “adhocracy,” meaning he makes it up as he goes along, with minimal checks and balances.The election commission announced late Monday the victors in races for only 23 of the body’s 161 seats; most of the remainder will be decided in runoff elections expected next month.The election came just days after President Biden hosted leaders from across Africa in Washington to declare the United States’ commitment to the continent and voice his support for democracy.Mr. Saied attended the summit and roundly dismissed American criticism of his power grab in a meeting with the editorial board of The Washington Post. He blamed “fake news” for creating the sense that he is an autocrat and accused unidentified “foreign forces” of supporting his political foes.“There are so many enemies of democracy in Tunisia who want to do everything they can to torpedo the country’s democratic and social life from within,” Mr. Saied said.The Biden administration drew some criticism over its sanguine reaction to the election. Ned Price, a State Department spokesman, called it “an essential initial step toward restoring the country’s democratic trajectory.”Ms. Marks said on Twitter that the U.S. statement “absurdly dubbed the sham ballot ‘essential step’ to return to democracy.”The electoral commission said on Monday that only 11.2 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots in what was the country’s fourth election since Tunisians toppled their longtime dictator in a 2011 popular uprising, which set off the wave of Arab Spring revolts across the Middle East.That was the lowest participation level since the revolution and analysts attributed it to dwindling faith among voters in democracy itself. It was even below the roughly 30 percent turnout for a July constitutional referendum that enshrined the expansion of Mr. Saied’s powers and well below the participation rate in the 2019 presidential vote that brought him to power, which was about 50 percent. In 2014, about two-thirds of registered voters participated in parliamentary elections.The 23 confirmed winners included Ibrahim Bouderbala, the former head of the Tunisian Bar Association and a vocal supporter of Mr. Saied. Three women also won seats.When the Arab Spring revolts toppled leaders across the Arab world, Tunisia was lauded as the only one to emerge from the tumult as a multiparty democracy. But that legacy has fallen apart in recent years, as economic distress has spread and Mr. Saied has concentrated power in his hands, all but killing the country’s young democracy.After being elected by a large margin in 2019, Mr. Saied, formerly a little known constitutional law professor, suspended Parliament in 2021 in a move that many Tunisians welcomed, hoping it was a step toward curbing corruption and reviving the economy.A rally against Mr. Saied in Tunis this month organized by the opposition Salvation Front. The coalition called for protests and sit-ins after this weekend’s vote.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut change has not come, with poverty spreading and increasing numbers of Tunisians attempting often-lethal boat trips to Europe in hopes of starting new lives. Mr. Saied has ruled by presidential decree, pushed through a new constitution that grants him greater powers and issued the electoral law that governed Saturday’s election.That law banned political parties from the electoral process, instead allowing voters to choose individual candidates in each district. It also did away with quotas for women and young candidates, provisions added after the revolution.Contributing to the low turnout was the absence of activities by political parties — which many Tunisians despise as corrupt and responsible for the country’s declining fortunes. The major parties boycotted the referendum this year that made Mr. Saied’s constitution into law.Also keeping people away were deep economic woes and a growing sense among voters that it would make little difference who won anyway.Mr. Saied’s supporters argued that the new electoral law would increase accountability by allowing voters to chose their representatives directly and not only as members of party lists.But critics said that keeping the parties out meant that only candidates wealthy enough to finance their own campaigns would be able to run.Analysts had low expectations for the newly chosen Parliament in any case, saying the lack of organized parties to set an agenda would leave it fractured and chaotic, and likely to follow Mr. Saied’s lead on any legislation.Ben Hubbard More

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      Tunisia Heads for First Elections Since Presidential Power Grab

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      Voters will choose a new Parliament, but under revised rules that vastly dilute the influence of political parties that many blame for sabotaging the North African nation’s 10-year experiment with democracy.TUNIS — Depending on whom you ask in Tunisia, Saturday’s parliamentary elections — the first since a 2021 presidential power grab that all but killed the country’s young democracy — represent either major progress or a charade.To some, the new electoral law governing the vote is an innovation that will shatter the power of the corrupt political parties that wrecked Tunisia’s economy, subverted justice and made a mockery of the country’s 10-year experiment with democracy. To others, it is the illegitimate brainchild of a president with autocratic aspirations of his own.It may be seen as delivering a group of parliamentarians perceived as far more representative of their districts than previous Tunisian assemblies, or a rubber-stamp chamber that will impose few checks on President Kais Saied’s one-man rule. It might be the next step in Mr. Saied’s plan to clean up corruption and return Tunisia to prosperity and the original goals of the 2011 revolution. Or it is the next stop on the way to looming political and economic ruin.This will be the fourth time that Tunisians have gone to the polls since overthrowing an autocrat in the 2011 revolt, which inspired the Arab Spring uprisings across the region and established the only democracy to emerge from the movement.The elections will resuscitate a body that Mr. Saied suspended in July 2021 in what growing numbers of Tunisians now call a coup, demolishing the young democracy as he began governing by presidential decree. At the time, Tunisians from all classes and regions greeted the moment with cheers and relief, hoping and believing that Mr. Saied would fulfill the revolution’s unmet promises.The president later vowed to restore the assembly as part of a series of sweeping political changes, including the drafting of a new constitution that he personally oversaw, that would put Tunisia back on track.Caught between their misgivings about the president and loathing of the political parties who oppose him, many Tunisians appear lukewarm at best on this vote. The scant interest may partly reflect the fact that Tunisians’ minds are occupied by making ends meet, not politics.But the new Parliament will look little like the one it replaces thanks to Mr. Saied’s new constitution and electoral law, which, among other changes, prevents political parties from being involved in elections. And as the economy has cratered over the past year, more Tunisians are losing faith that Mr. Saied’s project will bring about the changes they are desperate to see.A secondhand clothing stall in front of a poster of President Kais Saied in Kairouan, Tunisia, this summer. The country’s economy has been struggling, with high prices and not enough jobs.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times“What is happening is just a charade,” said Haifa Homri, 24, a law student who went from volunteering for Mr. Saied’s presidential campaign in 2019 to joining an anti-Saied protest of several hundred people in central Tunis last Saturday. “We can’t call them elections,” she added.“I see that the president has made promises,” she said. “But in reality, we can all see the economy is collapsing,” she added, pointing to Tunisia’s grim reality: prices too high, jobs too few, basics such as cooking oil and bottled water scarce on store shelves, and record numbers of people drowning off the coast in a desperate bid to migrate to Europe.Mr. Saied’s new electoral law, which, like all laws since July 2021, was issued by decree, removes from the electoral process the much-despised political parties that constitute some of his only organized opposition.It has voters selecting individual candidates in each district instead of a party list — a change Mr. Saied’s supporters say will buttress democratic accountability by ensuring new members of Parliament know and are known by the people they represent.All political parties are also banned from financing candidates, and there are no longer quotas for female or young candidates, which were instituted after the revolution.Those regulations have raised concerns that, far from becoming more representative of the country, Parliament will fill with men with the means to fund their own campaigns: businessmen, local notables and tribal elders. Of the 1,055 candidates running for 161 seats, just 122 are women.Such rules have led most of the major parties to boycott the elections, as they did the referendum earlier this year in which Tunisians approved Mr. Saied’s new constitution. They say the vote is illegitimate.Yet some analysts warn that sitting out the election risks ceding the entire field to Saied supporters, who include many of the candidates.Without parties to set the agenda and unite members around common causes, the new Parliament is expected to be fractured, chaotic and unproductive, offering few checks on the president’s power.Even an assembly full of political opponents would be largely helpless, as Mr. Saied’s new constitution greatly increases presidential power, reducing Parliament to an advisory role from the main force in government.Tunisians waiting to receive salaries and pensions at a post office in Tunis this summer. The government is struggling to meet a heavy debt burden and pay public salaries, among other economic problems.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times“So this is doomed to be a Parliament that is marginalized,” said Youssef Cherif, a political analyst who is the director of the Columbia Global Centers in Tunis. “I think people will now understand more and more that the power is in the hands of the president.”With Mr. Saied as the focus, opposition leaders defending the post-2011, pre-July 2021 order confidently predict that more Tunisians will abandon Mr. Saied as the economy degenerates. But analysts say his failure does not guarantee their success unless they can offer Tunisians a convincing alternative, a challenge for politicians whom Tunisians blame for what they call the “black decade” after the revolution.“Tunisians who are expecting their socioeconomic conditions to improve once Ennahda is pushed out of power and once Saied is able to implement his project — I think they will be disappointed, because things will not improve quickly,” Mr. Cherif said, referring to the Islamist party that dominated Parliament until July 2021.While polls have shown Mr. Saied’s support declining, the opposition parties’ numbers are far worse. Anti-government demonstrations, though growing, remain much smaller than in previous years, something analysts attribute to Mr. Saied’s enduring popularity.Though the major political parties have been stripped of power for nearly a year and a half, Mr. Saied’s supporters say those same parties are conspiring to block his changes.“Political parties are boycotting because these elections will put an end to their corruption,” said Salah Mait, an unemployed man from the capital, Tunis, who said he strongly supported Mr. Saied and his plans. “Their programs were just slogans. They just want to be in power.”Turnout has declined in every election since the revolution as faith in democracy has dwindled. The Chahed Observatory, an elections monitor, said the level of interest in the vote is the lowest in a decade, even below July’s constitutional referendum, when turnout was less than a third.In previous elections, party organizations helped boost turnout and energy. But this time, the self-funded candidates have mounted anemic campaigns, and only one candidate is on the ballot in some districts.And then there is the preoccupation with the flailing economy.Though the government has struck a preliminary deal with the International Monetary Fund for a $1.9 billion loan, economists say it will cover only a small part of the country’s needs. The government is struggling to meet a heavy debt burden, pay public salaries and keep importing basic commodities.A demonstration against Mr. Saied last week in Tunis.Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe conditions the government agreed to have drawn the ire of Tunisia’s public-sector labor union, earning Mr. Saied a powerful new opponent over the very issue on which he is most vulnerable.“The country is living through a suffocating situation and deteriorating on every level,” Noureddine Taboubi, the secretary general of the union, said in a speech to members this month. “We are going into elections without color or taste that came from a constitution that was not collaborative, not a result of consensus nor approval by the majority,” he added.“The elections are a charade,” some in the crowd began shouting.The union’s opposition has helped prevent previous Tunisian governments from pushing through the tough changes that the I.M.F. demands, such as selling off publicly owned companies and lifting subsidies on food, gas and electricity.With the economy in free fall, the drumbeat of politically motivated prosecutions and the weakening of civil liberties under Mr. Saied have drawn less attention. But the president remains steadfast against criticism.“Tunisians know that all the work I’m doing is for Tunisians to live with dignity and liberty,” he said while visiting a poor neighborhood in Tunis on Sunday night, going on to criticize the opposition as doing little to improve living conditions when it was in power. “We will stick to the principles we started with, and we will carry on.” More

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      Rached Ghannouchi: Tunisia Is in Danger of Dictatorship

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      On the morning of July 26, my colleagues and I — all of us democratically elected members of Parliament — found the Parliament building in downtown Tunis surrounded by army tanks and our access blocked on the orders of President Kais Saied.In a televised speech the night before, Mr. Saied announced a host of measures, the most startling of which was suspending the work of the elected legislature. He stripped members of Parliament of their parliamentary immunity, sacked the prime minister and consolidated judicial and executive power in his hands. By doing so, Mr. Saied is seeking to overturn the results of an entire decade’s hard work by Tunisians who have fought for democratic reforms. I believe his actions are unconstitutional and threaten Tunisia’s democracy.I held a sit-in in front of the Parliament building but ultimately decided to leave and urged others to do so because I was worried about any potential confrontation that could result in bloodshed. Nearly a week has gone by and we are still at an impasse. As leader of the largest party in Parliament, I’m writing this in the hopes of finding a way out of this crisis.Tunisians’ dissatisfaction with the political leadership’s performance is legitimate. In recent weeks, the country has seen a dangerous rise in Covid-19 cases and deaths as the health system struggled to respond effectively to the crisis. We were also faced with a difficult economic situation and a protracted political crisis.More than a decade ago, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor, set himself on fire and became the catalyst for the Arab Spring protests. Here in Tunisia, his actions helped bring about the end of over five decades of dictatorship, which were marked by endemic corruption, repression of dissent and economic underdevelopment. Today’s unrest is not a quest for freedom, but dissatisfaction over economic progress.We vowed to never forget what Mr. Bouazizi and thousands of Tunisians of all political persuasions struggled for. We sought to draft a new constitution enshrining the rule of law and separation of powers; to build new institutions to protect individual and collective freedoms; and, above all, we committed to respecting the ballot box. Tunisia’s Constitution of 2014 was hailed as one of the most progressive in the Arab world. But today, it is being ripped up by Mr. Saied.Mr. Saied said his actions were taken in order to return social peace to the country. He also said his measures are temporary. On the contrary, these decisions follow the playbook for establishing a dictatorial regime. He cited Article 80 of the Constitution, which allows him to take extraordinary measures if there is “imminent danger” threatening the nation. But Article 80 also stipulates that he must consult the prime minister and the speaker of the Parliament before doing so, and that Parliament must be in a state of continuous session to oversee the president’s actions during this period. By suspending Parliament, he has made impossible the condition under which the article can be invoked.The president’s moves tear up the system of separation of powers based on checks and balances that have been put in place by the Tunisian people and their elected representatives.Some political opponents are attempting to justify these anti-constitutional measures by resurrecting ideological differences between so-called secularists and Islamists. Neither label neatly fits the two sides. We consider our party, Ennahda, a Muslim democrat party, but what is being targeted here is not any specific political party but Tunisian democracy as a whole.This attempted coup against the Constitution and the democratic revolution is an assault on our democratic values. Such moves must be met with clear and strong condemnation by the international community. Tunisia is the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring and continues to be, for many Arabs, a source of hope in their pursuit of democracy.Tunisia has had its fair share of problems. We have faced the colossal task of building a new democratic system while facing deeply entrenched structural social and economic crises. We have struggled with an electoral law that produces a fragmented Parliament and requires the formation of coalition governments. Our progress in building democracy, implementing social and economic reforms and fighting the pandemic have been slow. But these crises are no justification for tearing up the Constitution and endangering the entire democratic system.One-man rule is not the solution to our country’s economic problems. Dictatorship invariably leads to increased corruption, cronyism, violations of individual rights and inequalities.I sincerely hope that Mr. Saied will reverse his decisions. There are several constructive steps he can take right now, and Tunisia’s Western and regional allies should support him in taking those steps.Parliament must be allowed to function in order to vote in a new government and embark on bold economic reforms to address the pandemic and unemployment. I hope that Mr. Saied will embark on a national dialogue to find the best way out of this impasse.We must build on what we have achieved, rather than throwing out democracy. We have seen in the past how gathering all powers in the hands of a single person led our country to plummet into the darkness and despair of dictatorship. Tunisia has overcome its problems through national dialogue in the past, and we are capable of doing it again.Mr. Ghannouchi was elected as the speaker of Parliament in Tunisia in 2019. He is a founder and the leader of the Ennahda party.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Democracy Didn’t Need COVID-19 to Begin Its Decline

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      Middle East Monitor features an article by American-Palestinian journalist Ramzy Baroud, who celebrates Tunisia’s progress as a democracy. The author cites recent data produced by two independent agencies that monitor the state of democracy in the world. He makes a point of comparing the North African nation that set off the short-lived phenomenon known as […] More