Tunisia’s problems grow worse while Kais Saied makes scarce | CPT PPP Coverage

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On April 4, after a nearly two-week public absence, Tunisian President Kais Saied reappeared on screen. Speaking in a hoarse voice and with a pallid face, he cursed his opponents who had questioned his absence in a country that now largely relies on a one-man power.

Tens of those dissidents are being investigated for supposed “contacts with foreign diplomats,” and many have been detained, after a number of judges were dismissed and the courts increasingly came under presidential influence.  

Saeid’s only foreign policy announcement was the decision to appoint an ambassador to Syria, in line with the comeback of Bashar al-Assad promoted by most Arab states. However, a number of Tunisian missions in major foreign capitals have no envoy, including Brussels and Rome – while the flow of migration from Tunisia to Italy grows by the day as the weather improves. As the country is on the brink of bankruptcy, awaiting an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it was not even hinted that the president would sign it.  

Speaking in the coastal city of Monastir on Thursday, Saied directly rejected the terms of the IMF loan, which include cuts to food and energy subsidies. Asked if he would accept the agreement’s terms, Saied responded, “I will not hear diktats.”

Unlike Egypt, and more like Lebanon, there is no significant Gulf money deposited in Tunisian banks. Saudi Arabia’s recent curtailing of regional aid leaves little choice but going to the IMF. It is also a precondition to EU financial help. US Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East Barbara Leaf said in London on March 30 that “if the government decides not to pursue an IMF arrangement, we’re keen to know what their alternative plans are.” She also emphasized US commitment for a “democratic and accountable government that preserves the space for free debate and dissent.”

Recent droughts mean Tunisia needs massive imports of foodstuffs to feed its 13 million people. But IMF aid will require privatizing a number of public services, laying off employees and limiting subsidies, which would lead to price hikes. And Saied cannot risk alienating the only remaining powerful independent Tunisian body — the UGTT workers union, headed by charismatic leader Noureddine Taboubi. That catch-22 may be why the president disappeared from public sight for nearly two weeks, although the cause was allegedly “a minor heart attack,” according to well-informed Italian news agency Nova.   

While the president’s harsh words on African immigrants made the news in March, increasing numbers of those migrants, facing renewed scapegoating and local economic depression, are risking their lives on voyages towards Italy in unseaworthy boats that frequently sink. The morgue in the coastal city of Sfax, a major port for illegal departures, reported in the last week in March that it was holding twice its normal capacity of bodies.

Tunisia, formerly more hospitable to African migrants, is increasingly treating them as badly as neighboring Libya or Algeria. Both countries traditionally provided indirect aid to Tunisia, thanks to the remittances of expatriate workers, but now they are themselves in domestic political havoc. Libya is still torn between Benghazi and Tripoli, with little if any progress in sight toward reunification. And the Ukraine war has jeopardized Russia’s traditional role as Algeria’s largest provider of weapons. A major cabinet reshuffling in mid-March sidelined veteran Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, and there is little support for Tunis to be expected from Algiers at the present. 

The downward spiral of Tunisia exacerbates the regional quandary of central North Africa, torn between inward and outward illegal migration flows. They even hamper the capacity of the two main hydrocarbon exporters, Algeria and Libya, to capitalize on that rent for their own development, and for the prosperity of the region as a whole — from which Tunisia had benefited in the past.