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Tunisia: party calls for early legislative election to ensure stability 

March 14, 2022 at 3:44 pm

A woman casts her vote at a polling station during the parliamentary elections in Tunis, Tunisia on 6 October 2019 [Yassine Gaidi/Anadolu Agency]

The Free Destourian Party in Tunisia called yesterday for an early legislative election to be held to ensure the stability of the state and deal with the economic challenges, Anadolu has reported. The party has 16 members of parliament out of a total of 217.

The parliament in Tunisia is suspended and closed to MPs due to the exceptional measures imposed by President Kais Saied last July. Legislation is now introduced by presidential decree. Saied announced in December that a legislative election will be held in 17 December this year.

“There was no political stability before 25 July [2021],” Abeer Moussa, the head of Free Destourian Party, told those attending a demonstration in the capital Tunis. “Now we do not have a permanent authority that obliges the Tunisian state, since the existing authority has no legitimacy.”

Most of the political and popular forces in Tunisia reject Saied’s exceptional measures, and consider them as a “coup against the constitution”. His supporters claim that they are a “correction of the course of the 2011 revolution” to cope with political, economic and health crises.

READ: Rights groups urge Tunisia to drop restrictions on civil society

“No investor can put his money in a country that does not have a parliament, and ‘parliament’ means an institution elected by the Tunisian people,” added Moussa. “If Tunisians have elected an institution that starved and impoverished them [the suspended parliament], this does not mean that we do not turn to the ballot box now to elect a parliament.”

Saied began a five-year presidential term in 2019. He described his exceptional measures as “measures within the framework of the Constitution to protect the country from imminent danger.”

Is Tunisia slipping into a dangerous pitfall?- Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Is Tunisia slipping into a dangerous pitfall?- Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]