Tunisians return to elections on Saturday, eleven years to the day since a vendor’s self-immolation sparked the overthrow of their ruling tyrant and sparked a wave of popular uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East.
In the troubled decade since, other regional states that once collapsed under the strain of popular uprisings have been increasingly smothered by counter-revolutions that reclaimed civic gains and political liberties championed by their citizens.
Though Tunisia was the only nation to emerge from the Arab Spring protests with a democratic government, there are fears Saturday’s election will end its game with democracy and cement the return of strongman rule.
Current President Kais Saied, who ousted Tunisia’s ruling government in July last year and has since reshaped the constitution to give himself largely unlimited powers, is expected to head a new legislature with thin aegis and weakened political parties.
That the elections fall on the anniversary of Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire to protest his treatment by the authorities is highly symbolic, bringing down the curtain on an era that has come to be known as the Arab Spring – in the place where everything began.
Tunisian President Kais Saied revised the constitution. Photo: Johanna Geron/APOpposition groups and the main political parties have announced they will boycott the vote, calling it undemocratic and a fig leaf of legitimacy for a power grab that would destroy hard-won freedoms.
Nejib Chebbi, leader of an anti-Saied coalition that includes the Islamist Ennahda party, said the election, coming during an economic crisis that is fueling poverty, is a “stillborn farce”.
But Saied says a referendum on constitutional reform held in July gave a mandate to push through the changes, and claims Tunisians are looking for political security after a decade of stumbling and often crumbling democracy.
“Tunisia is the last domino to fall in the region,” said Hamish Kinnear, Middle East and North Africa analyst at risk information firm Verisk Maplecroft. “However, if we look ahead, nothing is inevitable. Saied may be dominant now – but could face fierce domestic opposition to his plans to introduce structural economic reforms.”
For now, however, those supporting Tunisia’s new strongman seem drawn to the reassurance he offers.
“What made Saied popular and strengthened his powers as president is that Tunisians had lost patience with their elected leaders as they watched nine consecutive governments make big promises in ten years and falter constantly, particularly on the economic front,” said Prof. Safwan Masri. Dean of Georgetown University in Qatar and author of Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly. “But the economic situation has not improved under Saied and his popularity, which has always been superficial, has waned.”
Tunisian protesters took part in a rally in the capital against the president last week. Photo: Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty ImagesIn nearby Egypt – whose leadership supported Saied’s rise to power – a revolution sparked by the 2011 ouster of Tunisian Zine Abidine Ben Ali has long since reverted to the kind of oppressive state rule that characterized the era of its longtime tyrant Hosni Mubarak. Though Egypt’s revolutionaries were among the loudest and biggest in the region, their quest to forge a political ecosystem in which citizens determine their own destiny was largely overwhelmed by a resurgent police state that exploited the mistakes of Mohamed Morsi’s short-lived government made was forced out of office and imprisoned in 2013.
“Forging democracy from the rubble of authoritarian states is a Herculean task,” Kinnear warned. “Hosni Mubarak might have been swept aside in a popular revolution and replaced by an elected leader, but other parts of the old regime – like the military – remained intact and later helped restore authoritarian rule. Democracy remains fragile, even once established.”
Masri said the jury is still open as to whether Tunisia can still succeed in its democratic experiment. “The social foundation of democratic Tunisia – its strong civil society and labor movement, together with its commitment to women’s rights and the visible role women play in public life – cannot be overlooked. As tempting as it is to look at all countries in the region through the same prism, it can be quite misleading. The situation is very different from, for example, Egypt, where the army and the labor movement have inverse strengths compared to Tunisia.”
HA Hellyer, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the election would not necessarily mark the end of an era. “The post-2011 era has seen revolution and counter-revolution, but by no means a final chapter. What we see are cycles that continue to unfold, in which populations insist on pushing and then backing down, and status quo systems try to cope. Kais Saied is another note in the story in that regard, but I don’t think he has crystallized anything yet.”