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Tag: Tunisia government

  • Tunisians protest inflation, president’s squeeze on dissent

    Tunisians protest inflation, president’s squeeze on dissent

    TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Thousands of people marched through Tunisia’s capital Saturday, decrying an expanding crackdown on opposition voices and a proposed lifting of subsidies for food and other goods.

    The march organized by Tunisia’s powerful central trade union was the latest challenge to Tunisian President Kais Saied, whose leadership of the North African nation is prompting growing international concern.

    Since taking office in October 2019, Saied has consolidated his power, dismantled the country’s democratic gains and unleashed repression against migrants from elsewhere in Africa.

    Marchers chanted slogans Saturday against price increases and food shortages, the biggest concern for most Tunisians.

    Talks with the International Monetary Fund on an agreement to help finance the government have stalled amid political tensions. The IMF has called for the lifting of some subsidies and other reforms.

    The Tunisian General Labour Union, which is known by its French acronym UGTT, accuses the president of betraying promises made in negotiations over the reforms.

    The UGTT was one of a ’’quartet″ of groups that won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for their work to save Tunisia’s budding democracy from collapsing into civil war.

    Saied questioned the motives of the organizers of Saturday’s march and denounced the UGTT’s decision to invite foreign trade union leaders to the protest as “unacceptable.”

    The general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation was declared persona non grata in Tunisia after taking part in a demonstration last month. On Thursday, Tunisian border police turned away a Spanish trade union leader.

    “Tunisia is not a farm, meadow or a land without a master. Whoever wants to demonstrate is free to do so, but he does not have to invite foreigners to participate,” Saied said on the eve of Saturday’s march.

    UGTT Secretary-General Noureddine Taboubi said he would have liked to hear a reassuring and unifying speech from the president, but instead heard only coded insults.

    “We are supporters of social peace and our weapon is arguments. We are not promoters of violence and terrorism,” the union leader said.

    Taboubi and other marchers expressed solidarity with government critics who are currently incarcerated. Tunisian police have arrested a string of figures from the Islamist opposition, the media, the judiciary and the business community.

    Saied has grown increasingly autocratic since he suspended parliament in 2021, a move that many Tunisians welcomed at the time as an effort to end political deadlock that had worsened economic and social tensions.

    Since then, Tunisia’s financial troubles have worsened, and the country’s legacy as the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings is in tatters.

    Some protesters Saturday shared support for sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia, who have described getting pelted with rocks, hit with racist insults or kicked out of their lodging since the president called for a crackdown against foreigners.

    Ivory Coast and Guinea sent planes to evacuate their citizens being targeted as Tunisian authorities stepped up arrests of migrants. Some sub-Saharan Africans have camped out in tents in front of the U.N. migration office in Tunis to seek protection.

    Meanwhile, Tunisian authorities banned another protest, planned for Sunday by the Islamist National Salvation Front, calling it a “threat to public safety.” Islamist leaders called on supporters to take to the streets anyway.

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  • Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

    Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

    NICE, France — Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian president appears determined to upend the country’s political system. The strategy is not only threatening a democracy once seen as a model for the Arab world, experts say it is also sending the economy toward a tailspin.

    The International Monetary Fund has frozen an agreement meant to help the government get loans to pay public sector salaries and fill budget gaps aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Foreign investors are pulling out of Tunisia, and ratings agencies are on alert. Inflation and joblessness are on the rise, and many Tunisians, once proud of their country’s relative prosperity, now struggle to make ends meet.

    An election debacle a week ago has made matters worse: Just 11% of voters took part in a first-round vote for a new parliament meant to replace a legislature disbanded last year by President Kais Saied. Opposition figures, including from the popular Islamist movement Ennahdha, are demanding that he step down, and unions are threatening a general strike.

    Saied himself designed the elections to replace and reshape the parliament, as part of broad reforms that bolster his powers and that he says will solve Tunisia’s multiple crises. But voter disillusionment with the ruling class amid dire economic troubles contributed to a near-boycott of the election.

    Tunisia’s Western allies, like the United States and France, have expressed concern and urged the president to forge an inclusive political dialogue that would benefit the sluggish economy. Tunisia was the birthplace of Arab Spring democratic uprisings 12 years ago.

    Saied rejected criticism over the low voter turnout, saying what really matters is the second round of voting Jan. 19. He says his reforms are needed to rid the country of the corrupt political class and Tunisia’s foreign enemies. He lashed out at his political foes in the Ennahdha party, which had the largest number of lawmakers in the previous parliament, and ordered the arrest this week of its vice-president and former Prime Minister Ali Larayedeh on terrorism-related charges.

    “Saied seems impervious to criticism and intent on bulldozing his way to a new political system no matter how few Tunisians are engaged in the process,” said Monica Marks, a Tunisia expert and professor of Middle East politics at the New York University in Abu Dhabi.

    “No Tunisian asked Saied to reinvent the wheel of Tunisian politics, to write a new constitution and revamp the election law,” Marks said. “What Tunisians have been asking for is a more respectful government that meets their bread-and-butter needs and gives them economic dignity.”

    Saied’s promises to stabilize the economy helped ensure his landslide victory in the 2019 presidential election.

    But he has yet to present an economic recovery plan or strategy for his deeply indebted government to secure funds to pay for food and energy subsidies. The president has sidelined economists in state institutions, stalling the country’s budget and souring the environment for foreign investors.

    Tunisians have been hit with soaring food prices and shortages of fuel and basic staples like sugar, vegetable oil and rice in recent months. Inflation has reached 9.1%, the highest in three decades, according to the National Institute of Statistics, and unemployment is at 18% percent, according to the World Bank.

    “President Saied naively seems to think that if only he can complete his political roadmap, the economy will fix itself,” said Geoff Porter, a New York City-based North Africa risk assessment analyst, in a recent brief.

    Tunisia reached a preliminary agreement with the IMF on a $1.9 billion loan in October. It would enable the heavily indebted Tunisian government to access loans from other donors over a four-year period in return for sweeping economic reforms that include shrinking the public administration sector — one of the world’s largest — and a gradual lifting of subsidies.

    The agreement was subject to the IMF executive board’s approval, scheduled for Dec. 19. The state news agency TAP reported that “the government and the IMF have agreed to postpone” the final decision on the loan to give Tunisian officials “more time to present a new reform plan for the country’s sluggish economy.”

    Tunisia desperately needs access to the special drawing rights in order to avoid defaulting on external debt and to stabilize the economy, Porter said. He added: “Without the IMF funds, Tunisia’s economic freefall will accelerate.”

    Foreign investors operating in Tunisia are worried.

    Pharmaceutical manufacturers Novartis, Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline are leaving the country because they are not getting paid by the insufficiently funded state pharmaceutical distributor.

    Royal Dutch Shell, which operates two gas fields that accounted for 40% of Tunisia’s domestic production, announced in November it will exit Tunisia by year’s end. Despite hype over the country’s hydrogen sector, nothing has been done to attract investors as the country’s regulatory institutions are paralyzed by Saied’s political moves, Porter said.

    The president has also lost the tentative support of the country’s powerful trade union, the UGTT, for the IMF-prescribed reform plan in exchange for a bailout.

    UGTT leader Noureddine Taboubi agreed with the government in August to discuss a new “social contract” to help Tunisians in financial distress, the state TAP news agency reported. But Taboubi, whose influential union represents 67% of Tunisia’s work force, mainly employed in the public sector, recently pulled back on his commitment. He renewed his opposition to the IMF’s main demands to receive a loan program: a public sector wage freeze and restructuring of state-owned enterprises.

    ———

    Bouazza ben Bouazza contributed from Tunis, Tunisia.

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  • Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

    Tunisia’s political experiment threatens economic collapse

    NICE, France — Tunisia’s increasingly authoritarian president appears determined to upend the country’s political system. The strategy is not only threatening a democracy once seen as a model for the Arab world, experts say it is also sending the economy toward a tailspin.

    The International Monetary Fund has frozen an agreement meant to help the government get loans to pay public sector salaries and fill budget gaps aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    Foreign investors are pulling out of Tunisia, and ratings agencies are on alert. Inflation and joblessness are on the rise, and many Tunisians, once proud of their country’s relative prosperity, now struggle to make ends meet.

    An election debacle a week ago has made matters worse: Just 11% of voters took part in a first-round vote for a new parliament meant to replace a legislature disbanded last year by President Kais Saied. Opposition figures, including from the popular Islamist movement Ennahdha, are demanding that he step down, and unions are threatening a general strike.

    Saied himself designed the elections to replace and reshape the parliament, as part of broad reforms that bolster his powers and that he says will solve Tunisia’s multiple crises. But voter disillusionment with the ruling class amid dire economic troubles contributed to a near-boycott of the election.

    Tunisia’s Western allies, like the United States and France, have expressed concern and urged the president to forge an inclusive political dialogue that would benefit the sluggish economy. Tunisia was the birthplace of Arab Spring democratic uprisings 12 years ago.

    Saied rejected criticism over the low voter turnout, saying what really matters is the second round of voting Jan. 19. He says his reforms are needed to rid the country of the corrupt political class and Tunisia’s foreign enemies. He lashed out at his political foes in the Ennahdha party, which had the largest number of lawmakers in the previous parliament, and ordered the arrest this week of its vice-president and former Prime Minister Ali Larayedeh on terrorism-related charges.

    “Saied seems impervious to criticism and intent on bulldozing his way to a new political system no matter how few Tunisians are engaged in the process,” said Monica Marks, a Tunisia expert and professor of Middle East politics at the New York University in Abu Dhabi.

    “No Tunisian asked Saied to reinvent the wheel of Tunisian politics, to write a new constitution and revamp the election law,” Marks said. “What Tunisians have been asking for is a more respectful government that meets their bread-and-butter needs and gives them economic dignity.”

    Saied’s promises to stabilize the economy helped ensure his landslide victory in the 2019 presidential election.

    But he has yet to present an economic recovery plan or strategy for his deeply indebted government to secure funds to pay for food and energy subsidies. The president has sidelined economists in state institutions, stalling the country’s budget and souring the environment for foreign investors.

    Tunisians have been hit with soaring food prices and shortages of fuel and basic staples like sugar, vegetable oil and rice in recent months. Inflation has reached 9.1%, the highest in three decades, according to the National Institute of Statistics, and unemployment is at 18% percent, according to the World Bank.

    “President Saied naively seems to think that if only he can complete his political roadmap, the economy will fix itself,” said Geoff Porter, a New York City-based North Africa risk assessment analyst, in a recent brief.

    Tunisia reached a preliminary agreement with the IMF on a $1.9 billion loan in October. It would enable the heavily indebted Tunisian government to access loans from other donors over a four-year period in return for sweeping economic reforms that include shrinking the public administration sector — one of the world’s largest — and a gradual lifting of subsidies.

    The agreement was subject to the IMF executive board’s approval, scheduled for Dec. 19. The state news agency TAP reported that “the government and the IMF have agreed to postpone” the final decision on the loan to give Tunisian officials “more time to present a new reform plan for the country’s sluggish economy.”

    Tunisia desperately needs access to the special drawing rights in order to avoid defaulting on external debt and to stabilize the economy, Porter said. He added: “Without the IMF funds, Tunisia’s economic freefall will accelerate.”

    Foreign investors operating in Tunisia are worried.

    Pharmaceutical manufacturers Novartis and Bayer are leaving the country because they are not getting paid by the insufficiently funded state pharmaceutical distributor.

    Royal Dutch Shell, which operates two gas fields that accounted for 40% of Tunisia’s domestic production, announced in November it will exit Tunisia by year’s end. Despite hype over the country’s hydrogen sector, nothing has been done to attract investors as the country’s regulatory institutions are paralyzed by Saied’s political moves, Porter said.

    The president has also lost the tentative support of the country’s powerful trade union, the UGTT, for the IMF-prescribed reform plan in exchange for a bailout.

    UGTT leader Noureddine Taboubi agreed in August to discuss a new “social contract” to help Tunisians in financial distress, the state TAP news agency reported. But Taboubi, whose influential union represents 67% of Tunisia’s work force, mainly employed in the public sector, recently pulled back on his commitment. He renewed his opposition to the IMF’s main demands to receive a loan program: a public sector wage freeze and restructuring of state-owned enterprises.

    ———

    Bouazza ben Bouazza contributed from Tunis, Tunisia.

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  • Tunisians vote for parliament amid economic, democracy vows

    Tunisians vote for parliament amid economic, democracy vows

    TUNIS, Tunisia — Tunisians are voting to elect a new parliament on Saturday, to the backdrop of a soaring cost-of-living crisis and concerns of democracy backsliding in the North African country — the cradle of Arab Spring protests a decade ago.

    Opposition parties — including the Salvation Front coalition that the popular Ennahda party is part of — are boycotting the polls because they say the vote is part of President Kais Saied’s efforts to consolidate power. The decision to boycott will likely lead to the next legislature being subservient to the president, whom critics accuse of authoritarian drift.

    Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and are scheduled to close at 6 p.m. (1700 GMT).

    Parliament last met in July 2021. Saied then froze the legislature and dismissed his government after years of political deadlock and economic stagnation. He dissolved parliament in March. Since then, Saied, who was elected in 2019 and still enjoys the backing of more than half of the electorate, has also curbed the independence of the judiciary and weakened parliament’s powers.

    In a referendum in July, Tunisians approved a constitution that hands broad executive powers to the president. Saied, who spearheaded the project and wrote the text himself, made full use of the mandate in September, changing the electoral law to diminish the role of political parties.

    The new law reduces the number of member of the lower house of parliament from 217 to 161, who are now to be elected directly instead of via a party list. And lawmakers who “do not fulfil their roles” can be removed if 10% of their constituents lodge a formal request.

    Critics say the electoral law reforms have hit women particularly hard. Only 127 women are among the 1,055 candidates running in Saturday’s election.

    Saied’s critics accuse him of endangering the democratic process. But many others believe that scrapping the party lists puts individuals ahead of political parties and will improve elected officials’ accountability. They are exasperated with political elites, welcome their increasingly autocratic president’s political reforms and see the vote for a new parliament as a chance to solve their dire economic crisis.

    Many believe their country’s decade-old democratic revolution has failed, a decade after Tunisia was the only nation to emerge from the Arab Spring protests with a democratic government.

    The vote comes on the 12th anniversary of the event that sparked the Arab Spring — when a Tunisian fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire because of the dire economic situation under the long-time strongman rule of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He died weeks later. His act of desperation prompted protests that led to the dictator’s ouster and provoked similar uprisings around the Arab world.

    ———

    Surk contributed from Nice, France.

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