Tunisia’s Anti-Democratic Turn Mustn’t Go Unanswered
The U.S. and Europe should use both aid and trade to pressure President Saied to reinstate Parliament and abandon his authoritarian ways.
He’s vulnerable.
Photographer: Dursun Aydemi/Anadolu Agency
Having killed off Tunisia’s democracy, President Kais Saied got a scare this week when its ghost threatened to crawl out of the grave. Parliament, suspended by presidential decree last summer, attempted Wednesday to convene online to vote against his power grab. The challenge was serious enough to draw a panicked response: Saied announced the dissolution of the legislative body, declaring that the lawmakers’ effort to carry out their duties amounted to an attempted coup.
The demise of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, the unicameral parliament created after the toppling of another autocratic president in the 2011 Arab Spring, shouldn’t go unnoticed. Those in the West who cheered at its birth as a hope for democracy in the Arab world must just as loudly protest its strangulation and call out the perpetrator.