Seven Ways Tunisian President Kais Saied Has Consolidated Power
From law professor to "Kais Ben Ali."*
Tunisia held presidential elections on October 6. The Independent High Authority for Elections (French acronym ISIE) announced the next day that incumbent President Kais Saied had won 91% of the vote.
The contest has been widely criticized as unfree due to the restrictive candidate screening process, the many arrests of dissidents and opposition figures, and an overall atmosphere of intimidation. But even if the official results may not necessarily reflect the mood of the Tunisian electorate, they confirm Saied’s power. How did Saied, who had never held office before winning the 2019 election and who received only 18% in the first round of the 2019 election, achieve such a dominant position in Tunisian politics?
Here are seven factors I see:
Popular support: Assessments of the 2019 elections’ integrity were mixed, but there seems to be little doubt that Saied’s background (former law professor) and branding (independent social conservative) drew some genuine enthusiasm at a time when the major parties’ welcome had largely been worn out. Saied won the second round in 2019 with nearly 73% of the vote. Meanwhile, Saied’s “self-coup” of July 2021, in which he dismissed and the government and dissolved parliament, also appears to have been popular. It’s worth quoting at length from Arab Barometer’s 2021-2022 report on Tunisia (p. 2): “The Arab Barometer survey of Tunisia makes clear that many citizens welcomed the events of July 25, 2021, including the suspension of parliament. It appears Tunisians viewed these actions as attempting to break the political deadlock more than a political coup. The fact that their president was taking charge and promising solutions to the political deadlock appears very attractive to most citizens. As a result, Saied is the most popular national actor in the country save for the armed forces.” There’s much more to the story, and popularity is a moving target, but Saied has received significant backing from ordinary Tunisians at key moments.
Institutional control: Saied has concentrated institutional power in his own hands, a move that was the essence of the self-coup. Saied has replaced his prime ministers five times in five years, thus keeping his prime ministers and cabinet ministers on a tight leash. The extent of Saied’s institutional control was evident during the lead-up to this election, as ISIE faced off against the Administrative Court over issues pertaining to candidate eligibility - a battle that the ISIE, run by Saied’s loyalists since 2022, decisively won.
Courting the military: The Tunisian writer Hatem Nafti had a piece at Middle East Eye recently arguing that Saied and the military now empower each other. Similar perspectives can be found in Francophone media (for example here). Some of what is reported about the relationship comes down to rumor, and one can also find publications arguing that there are serious tensions between Saied and the generals. But it makes sense that Saied, as he steamrolls other power centers and counter-elites, would want to keep the military mostly happy. Undoubtedly he must realize that he could be the target of a coup, particularly if any severe shocks befall the country, and so wooing the military both boosts his power in the present and reduces coup risks for the future.
Legal tools: The law has been a key vehicle for Saied to expand his power. Most prominently, Decree Law 54 of 2022, a cybercrime measure, has been wielded as a means of punishing dissidents and critics. At Carnegie, Sarah Yerkes lays out how that law and several other legal and constitutional provisions combined to allow Saied to shape the playing field for the 2024 elections - through arresting challengers, disqualifying candidates, and criminalizing dissent and criticism.
Repression of counter-elites: Those legal tools have enabled a sweeping effort to dismantle various nodes of opposition, within the political parties and within civil society. Particular targets have included Ennahda, the Muslim democratic party that was in opposition throughout the time of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (in power 1987-2011); the National Salvation Front, an anti-2021 self-coup coalition that includes Ennahda; and the human rights community. Not just the repression but also the theatrical nature of some major arrests - one arrest this year took place on live television - reinforce the sense that Saied is seeking to break the opposition. The repression constrains key opponents, intimidates fence-sitters, expands Saied’s institutional reach, and reshapes political space.
Scapegoating and externalization: Saied has endorsed and abetted anti-migrant and especially anti-black sentiment in Tunisia since 2023. As an anonymous contributor at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy writes, “The timing of the rhetoric proliferation coincided directly with the worsening of living standards in Tunisia, while helping the state to re-assert its dominance by controlling the narrative.” Racist rhetoric and violence offers a distraction, a target, and an outlet for ordinary people. Meanwhile, although I wouldn’t call it scapegoating, the administration has shaped and channeled popular pro-Palestinian sentiment as another means of diverting attention away from national problems - a tactic also used by authorities in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere.
External backing: Tunisia enjoys substantial international funding and legitimation from (a) the European Union and various European countries on a bilateral basis, especially in connection with migration control; (b) the United States, especially in connection with counterterrorism and security; (c) Algeria, which has extended generous loans as part of what one commentator went so far as to call a “vassalization” of Tunisia; and (d) various other powers, including China, Russia, and Iran. Tunisia continues to display a wide range of alliances, whether from the Western powers that view Tunisia as an indispensable “partner” or from authoritarian states that also see advantage in courting Saied.
Saied’s rule may be more brittle than it looks - but Saied has marshaled a formidable range of tools in just five years, leveraging his initial popularity and his institutional aggression, vastly extending executive authority while jailing opponents and dissidents. Economic crisis and myriad other problems confront him, but the formal levers of power are all, for the moment, in his hands.
*The reference comes from a (Freudian?) slip on television.