Why has Tunisia’s president sacked the prime minister?

Tunisia’s president has sacked the country’s prime minister and suspended parliament after violent mass protests broke out yesterday.

Demonstrators took to the streets after “anger over the government’s handling of a massive recent spike in Covid cases” compounded “general unrest over the nation’s economic and social turmoil”, the BBC reports.

Sunday saw thousands of people take to the streets in protest against Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, prompting President Kais Saied, who was elected in 2019, to announce that he was taking over.

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What happened?

As the BBC notes, “Tunisia’s revolution in 2011 is often held up as the sole success of the Arab Spring revolts across the region”, however, it has failed to deliver “stability economically or politically”.

“Years of paralysis, corruption and growing unemployment had already soured the views of Tunisians on their political system”, Sky News says, but the protestors were spurred to take direct action after “the coronavirus pandemic hammered the economy last year and infection rates shot up this summer”.

Tunisia has reported 563,000 cases and 18,369 deaths since the start of the pandemic and in the last month has seen its biggest spike with 5,625 cases on 24 July. Last week, Mechichi also sacked the country’s health minister amid a slow vaccination rollout.

Following Saied’s announcement that he was sacking Mechichi – an independent politician with no party affiliation – and freezing parliament, supporters took to the streets in celebration with “cheering and honking car horns” recalling the scenes that started the revolution which “triggered the Arab Spring protests across the Middle East”, the broadcaster adds.

However, “opponents in parliament immediately accused him of staging a coup”, the BBC says, and security forces “blocked off parliament and streets around the central Avenue Bourguiba” as protesters stormed the offices of Tunisia’s largest political party, Ennahda, “smashing computers and setting fire to its local headquarters in Touzeur”.

‘Save the state’

In a televised address, Saied said that he had taken the decision to sack Mechichi in order to ensure “social peace returns to Tunisia” and to “save the state”.

Saied, who later joined celebrations on the streets of the capital Tunis, continued that he would respond to any unrest with force, adding: “I warn any who think of resorting to weapons… and whoever shoots a bullet, the armed forces will respond with bullets.”

The “extent of support” for the move is “not clear”, Sky News says, with Ennahda’s leader, Rached Ghannouchi, calling for Tunisians to take to the streets to end what he described as “a coup against the revolution and constitution”. In a phone call with Reuters, Ghannouchi said: “We consider the institutions still standing, and the supporters of the Ennahda and the Tunisian people will defend the revolution.”

Former president Moncef Marzouki also described the move as a coup, adding: “I ask the Tunisian people to pay attention to the fact that they imagine this to be the beginning of the solution. It is the beginning of slipping into an even worse situation.”

Saied’s decision to take executive action has triggered “one of Tunisia’s biggest political crises since the 2011 revolution that introduced democracy”, Al Jazeera says, with ongoing anger over “accusations of police violence and the devastation the Covid pandemic” putting “an already weak economy” under further strain.

What next?

Ghannouchi was yesterday barred from entering the parliamentary building in Tunis when “the army surrounded parliament”, The Guardian reports.

“Dozens of Ennahda supporters” also “faced off against Saied supporters” near the site, the paper adds, with televised images showing the two groups “exchanging insults as the police held them apart”.

Under the Tunisian constitution “the president oversees only the military and foreign affairs”, the BBC says. However, Saied has now said that he will “govern alongside a new prime minister, with parliament suspended for 30 days”.

“The president cited Article 80 of the constitution for his actions”, arguing that it allows him to suspend parliament if it was in “imminent danger”, the broadcaster adds. “The 2014 constitution calls for a special court to be set up to decide disputes like this, but it has not been established.”

Saied was elected on a pledge to “overhaul a complex political system plagued by corruption”, The Guardian says. The country’s last election, however, “delivered a fragmented chamber in which no party held more than a quarter of seats”.

A decade on from the revolution that overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia is still racked by “crumbling public services” and a “fractious political class” that “has been unable to form lasting, effective governments”, the paper adds.

Saied has also repeatedly clashed with Mechichi, amid accusations that the president has “blocked ministerial appointments and diverted resources from efforts to tackle Tunisia's economic crisis”, The Telegraph says.