Young Tunisians Don’t Trust Kais Saied Anymore

TUNIS—In 2019, Kais Saied won Tunisia’s early presidential elections with an overwhelming majority: more than 72 percent of the vote. Unaffiliated with a political party, the constitutional law professor seduced Tunisian voters because of his eloquence in literary Arabic and, especially, his apparent political integrity, since he never held any political position.

During the first two years of his mandate, the newly elected president seemed to be more of a figurehead than a political decision-maker. This can be partially explained by Tunisia’s semi-presidential regime, which limits presidential powers and gives more power to the Assembly of the Representatives of the People. Tunisians, however, criticized the president for his silence over the fiasco caused by the assembly’s deputies. Discontent among the public kept growing; and after a day of demonstrations on Republic Day, July 25, 2021, Saied dissolved parliament in a coup that he claimed was backed by the country’s constitution.

Tunisians, taken by surprise by the unexpected move, flooded the streets and celebrated. The next few days were filled with enthusiasm as Tunisians welcomed the post-coup era with more optimism; a number of young people organized neighborhood cleanup campaigns, and some grocery stores lowered their prices.

In the initial period following his coup, Saied seemed to fulfill his electoral promises of bringing to justice those accused of corruption by placing many judges and legislators under house arrest and a travel ban. In parallel, Saied, leveraging people’s excitement about his coup, began gradually establishing an authoritarian regime; journalists and activists who criticized the president were arrested while some assembly members who became opposition figures were tried in military courts.

Saied’s intentions to assume power and rule alone were confirmed after he changed the 2014 constitution to serve his own interests and put it to a referendum vote. The new constitution was approved despite the high abstention rate (69.5 percent). This low turnout didn’t discourage the Tunisian president from organizing legislative elections, the second round of which took place on Jan. 29, with a record low voter turnout of 11.3 percent. (By contrast, in the 2019 presidential elections, young people organized Saied’s electoral campaign, and around 90 percent of Tunisians ages 18 to 25 voted for him during the second round.)

Young people organized Saied’s electoral campaign in 2019. They are now abandoning him.

However, young voters now seem to be abandoning Saied; those over age 46 accounted for 77 percent of the voters in January. Foreign Policy spoke to young Tunisians who supported Saied’s coup in 2021 but switched sides after more than two years under his rule. (All of those interviewed for this article requested that only their first names be published.)

Syrine, 24, working in a call center in the capital of Tunis, said she was impressed with the boldness of Saied’s move back in July 2021. “No president before him dared to take this sensitive step,” she said. “Personally, I was very optimistic since I saw in this controversial decision a strong political will to change things for the better.”

For Elyes, who works in a travel agency, supporting Saied’s coup was a default choice, since he, like many Tunisians, opposed the assembly. “I didn’t vote for him during the 2019 presidential elections, and I wouldn’t under any more stable context,” the 27-year-old said.“In 2021, given the circumstances and the decadent political class, he wasn’t the best alternative—rather, the least bad option.”

Other young Tunisians who used to support Saied believe that he answered the people’s call. “Two years ago, Saied symbolically helped the Tunisian people exercise their sovereignty; on Republic Day, protests all over the country demanded the dissolution of the parliament,” said 22-year-old Jamil, an undergraduate business student. “It was like a second [Jasmine] Revolution; the people wanted, and the president executed.”

Those who voted for Saied in the 2019 elections were the most fervent supporters of the coup, and they ignored the many local and international observers who expressed their concerns regarding the possible drift toward authoritarianism. Nesrine, who voted for Saied in both rounds of the 2019 presidential election, said the president’s coup made her finally feel that she made the right choice in 2019. “The last decade taught us that this country needs a leader who rules it with an iron fist,” the 28-year-old banker said. “Regardless of how drastic his decision was, it was about time to end the assembly’s fiasco and polish Tunisia’s image.”

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From the 2019 presidential election until after the coup, Saied’s sweet talk gripped the public’s imagination and kept citizens dreaming of a better future. However, Tunisians, for some time now, have been asking the president for less talk and more action. Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Tunisia has suffered from food shortages, which became recurrent problems; basic foodstuffs such as sugar, milk, flour, and rice would be frequently gone from shops’ shelves or were rationed when available. The financial crisis, the lack of foreign currency, and the state’s budget deficit are causes of food insecurity in Tunisia. However, Saied chose to blame “speculators” and those who “hold monopolies” in the food industry.

Long lines at supermarkets and bakeries have become commonplace; a chaotic scene filmed in September 2022 in a Tunisian supermarket, where people were snapping up sugar, demonstrated the depth of the food crisis. Besides, the shortage of basic medicine has been going on since 2021; around 300 drugs, including treatments for chronic diseases, were missing as of December 2022.

Aside from food and medicine shortages, Saied has been widely criticized for poorly managing the emigration crisis; 15,395 Tunisians, including 2,000 minors, reached Italy illegally in 2022.

Aside from food and medicine shortages, Saied has been widely criticized for poorly managing the emigration crisis, which has increased over the last few years; according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, 15,395 Tunisians, including 2,000 minors, reached Italy illegally in 2022. However, Tunisians criticized Saied for his long silence regarding the latest Zarzis boat tragedy, which involved the drowning of 18 Tunisians who were trying to emigrate.

After massive protests in Zarzis and other cities across the country, Saied declared that it hadn’t been an accident caused by overloading the small inflatable vessel—as smugglers are known to do to maximize profits—but rather provoked by someone who punctured the boat. The president promised to lead investigations regarding this “assassination.” The absurdity and senselessness of his words shocked Tunisians amid such national grief. Elyes said Saied’s eloquent Arabic wasn’t enough anymore to satisfy Tunisians, who need much more than wooden language to fill their empty stomachs and pay their bills. “While his communication strategy worked for some time, it’s not efficient anymore,” he told Foreign Policy.

Syrine, who once enthusiastically supported Saied, expressed her disappointment regarding the way things evolved after the coup. “Although we’re used to politicians failing us over and over, the way things turned out after July 2021 has been a painful disappointment for all those who backed Saied and believed his pompous words,” she said. The 24-year-old criticized the president’s denial of the economic, social, and political situation in the country and demonization of his political opponents, activists, and journalists—and more recently, refugees and migrants. “It almost seems like he’s living in a parallel universe or on another planet,” she added. “He doesn’t see or chooses not to see his people’s problems or acknowledge their existence. His only job is the witch hunt of his opponents.”

Jamil said Saied’s desperate attempts to establish a solid dictatorship have failed since he lacks the skills to rule a country and his weak authoritarian regime lacks credibility and support. “He tried to copy [former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine] Ben Ali’s coup in 1987 but failed spectacularly,” he said, referring to the country’s former dictator who was ousted during the Arab Spring in 2011. “Despite his measureless ambitions, Saied doesn’t have the competence and experience of Ben Ali, who was a statesman. … He’s losing his supporters; young people gave up on him, and even political parties who backed up his coup are slowly abandoning him.”

For Nesrine, Saied has made many bad choices that put the future of the country at risk. However, he’s not the only one to blame for Tunisia’s deep multidimensional crisis. “We shouldn’t forget that the president is trying to address issues that have been accumulating for more than 10 years now,” she said. “Although Saied tried at first to repair the damage done by the political class from 2011 to 2021, he made many mistakes. … He chose authoritarianism and autocracy to take control of the situation.”

Jamil argues that high inflation, which is expected to reach an average of 11 percent in 2023 and could spiral out of control, will make democracy a distant memory and a luxury given the current circumstances when so many families are struggling to put food on the table. Well aware of this situation, Saied is using it to his benefit, Jamil said, to establish an autocracy and convince people that it would solve the country’s economic problems.

Despite growing weary of the current situation in their country, Tunisians, especially young people, have not stopped resisting Saied’s authoritarianism. They showed the president that they have free choice by boycotting the second round of his legislative elections this year, in which people ages 23 to 35 represented a mere 1.7 percent of the participating voters.

For more than a decade now, Tunisians (especially the young) have grown tired of organizing protests and marching in the streets. They have evolved into a quieter, yet resilient form of silent protest. Boycotting, it seems, is young Tunisians’ new way to assert their sovereignty.