Tunisia’s Anti-Democratic Turn Mustn’t Go Unanswered

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- 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.

The Biden administration and its European allies, lamentably timid in their response to Saied's dictatorial drift, should now more firmly demand the immediate reinstatement of Parliament, complete with the powers enshrined in the Tunisian constitution. The president says he will draft a new constitution and put it to a referendum in the summer, but it must be made clear to him that the international community will regard these moves as illegitimate unless they are endorsed by the legislature.

Legitimacy is the key: That Saied was rattled by an online gathering of suspended lawmakers shows the legislature has it; his overreaction suggests he is losing it. This is an opportune moment for the U.S. and Western European nations, which collectively account for most of the aid Tunisia receives as well as much of its trade, to pressure the president to resuscitate the democracy he has throttled. Aid and trade, as well as desperately needed assistance from the International Monetary Fund, should be made contingent on Saied mending his ways.

Always disputatious and often dysfunctional, Tunisia's parliament was nonetheless the product of the freest elections in the Middle East and North Africa. Unlike in Iran or Egypt, there was no theocrat or tyrant to rig the vote in 2014 and 2019. Unlike the legislatures of Lebanon and Iraq, Tunisia's wasn't drawn along sectarian or ethnic lines.

Like the lawmakers, Saied was elected in a free and fair election. A constitutional lawyer, his main attraction to voters was his status as a political outsider. Tunisians hoped he would revitalize the sclerotic economy by breaking through political deadlock between Parliament's Islamist and secularist factions and the resistance to reform from powerful unions.

When he suspended the legislature, plenty of Tunisians saw it as a cutting of the Gordian Knot. The president, they reckoned, would be able to work on economic reforms without hind rance from the political parties that had failed to do so. Even the powerful Tunisian General Labor Union, better known by its French acronym UGTT, seemed inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt: Its leaders criticized the president's usurpation of power, but didn't call for national strikes against him. (Their hesitation may have been influenced by well-attended rallies by Saied's supporters.)

For his part, Saied promised to consult directly with the people in the drafting of new laws and promised they would soon be able to elect a new parliament. But, as so often is the case with autocrats, the president has used his executive power to accumulate still more power. Having muzzled the legislature, he co-opted the military and commandeered the judiciary.

The economy, meanwhile, has continued to founder, and IMF assistance hasn't materialized. A recent research note from Morgan Stanley raised the risk that Tunisia will default on its debts in 2023. (Fitch Ratings has downgraded the country's sovereign debt rating to CCC from B-.

There are growing signs that Tunisians are beginning to see through the president's promises. There have been few pro-Saied rallies of late. Few people have cared to participate in the online “national consultation” process that he said would inform the new constitution. And the UGTT leaders have finally roused themselves to threaten a national strike, although their grievance has less to do with his accumulation of power than with the prospect of IMF-decreed economic reforms, including reduced spending on subsidies and public sector wages.

With the tide turning against him, it's no wonder Saied was spooked by the online challenge from the suspended lawmakers. It is time for the West to loosen his grip around the neck of Tunisia's democracy.

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Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs. A former editor in chief of the Hindustan Times, he was managing editor of Quartz and Time magazine's international editor.