Tunisia’s Workers' Party: Saied continues his coup ahead of establishing authoritarian rule

The Tunisian Workers’ Party yesterday said the president’s decision to extend the exceptional measures he has taken until further is “one of the episodes of the coup path that [President] Kais Saied initiated on 25 July to neutralise his opponents in the ruling system and take over all powers.”

The party confirmed in a statement that Saied did not consult the Provisional Instance to Review the Constitutionality of Draft Laws, when he extended the exceptional measures.

The statement added that this step embodies a “continuation of the monopoly of all legislative, executive, and judicial authorities without being subject to any oversight mechanism, and a completion of his [the President’s] coup against the constitution,” adding that it is “in preparation for the implementation of his populist project based on individual rule and tyranny.”

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The Workers’ Party stressed that “the President of the Republic refrained from taking any serious and in-depth measures to combat financial, political, and administrative corruption.”

Instead of tackling people’s worries in Tunisia, the statement added, Saied “has been quick to reassure regional and international forces,” considering that “they have been blatantly interfering in Tunisia’s affairs and discussing its fate in the complete absence of the people and the country’s living forces.”

As a result, Saied continues “to act as an absolute individual ruler, who dismisses and appoints, especially in the security and administrative agencies, with the aim of extending his influence, in addition to interfering in the judiciary, pressing charges publicly, gradually involving the military establishment into political life, appointing new loyalists, who served the old regime, to manage several public media institutions, and subjecting thousands of citizens to travel bans or imposing night raids that remind us of Ben Ali’s era.”