Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
What's going on in Tunisia, the only surviving democracy from the Arab Spring?
At stake in Tunisia are the hard-won political gains of the last ten years: the increases in freedom of expression and association, individual rights, and the Tunisian constitution.
As the countries around it descended into civil war or regressed into authoritarianism, Tunisia held free and fair national and local elections, adopted a liberal-democratic constitution, and witnessed a peaceful transition of power.
Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, who had served less than a year in office. Removing Prime Minister Mechichi from power was only one of several steps President Saied took to consolidate power and address what he saw as an urgent, emergency situation.
In an interview, Sarah Yerkes discusses President Qaïs Said’s sidelining of the country’s cabinet and parliament.
Spot analysis from Carnegie scholars on events relating to the Middle East and North Africa.
By dismissing the parliament and removing his political rivals from power, Tunisian President Kais Saied has set Tunisia on a path that is likely to end in further instability and potential bloodshed.
The border towns of Ouargla and Tataouine, suffer from a profound socio-economic marginalization by comparison to the northern and coastal regions.
Tunisia, the Arab world’s only free country according to Freedom House, is mired in three simultaneous crises that have the potential not only to undermine the country’s progress since the 2011 revolution, but also to plunge it into a deep national dysfunction.
While Tunisia has made noteworthy progress in its counterterrorism efforts, much more work remains to be done in the qualitative aspects of these efforts if progress is to be sustained.
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