Tunisia Once Again Is a Test for Arab Democracy
A nation that ejected a dictatorship more than a decade ago is in danger of institutionalizing another, a step that would diminish hopes for anti-authoritarian movements across North Africa and the Mideast.
Tunisia will show which way the wind blows for democracy.
Photographer: Chedly Ben Ibrahim/BloombergIt is the last-chance saloon for Tunisian democracy. A week from today, the country where the 2011 Arab Spring first bloomed will have what may be the final opportunity to prevent its president from institutionalizing a new dictatorship.
On July 25, exactly a year after Kais Saied fired the government, suspended parliament and assumed absolute authority, Tunisians will vote in a referendum on a new constitution that would cement the president’s complete control of their country. As Zaid al-Ali, the preeminent scholar on constitutions in the Arab world, wrote in the Washington Post: “The draft looks very much like the 1959 constitution, which laid the framework for Tunisia to be governed as an autocracy for half a century, until the breakdown that led to the 2011 uprisings.”