What next for Tunisia as crisis between president and parliament deepens?

The Tunisian President Kais Saied said parliamentary elections won’t be held within the next three months, hours after he dissolved the democratically elected parliament, plunging the country into the most severest political and economic crisis since the 2011 revolution.

Last July, as protests erupted over corruption, economic crisis and handling of the pandemic, Saied suspended parliament, granted himself extraordinary powers and dismissed his own prime minister and other officials.

At the time, he received support from many Tunisians, but opposition has grown as he spread his control and seized more power.

In defiance of Saied, the Tunisian parliament on Wednesday decided to reconvene virtually. 

The president attempted to block online video platforms throughout the country in a bid to stop a vote against his power grab from taking place, but failed to do so. 

READ MORE: Tunisia's Saied dissolves suspended parliament 'to preserve state'

Hours later, in his address he accused parliament of attempting to “stage a coup with foreign intervention” and announced that he was dissolving parliament “to protect the government, the institution and the Tunisian people”.

On Friday, Saied also announced that he would not hold elections within three months and would instead work on drafting a new constitution, which will be put to a referendum on July 25, and then hold elections in December.

Rached Ghannouchi, the speaker of the assembly and head of the Nahda party, told Reuters that at least 20 lawmakers from Nahda and other parties had been summoned by an anti-terrorism unit for investigations.

Until July when Saied suspended the parliament, Tunisia was seen as the only democracy to have emerged since the 2011 Arab spring, a string of popular uprisings that swept the Arab world.

READ MORE: Tunisia’s e-consultation process is another pretence for Saied’s power grab

Saied, a former professor of constitutional law, was elected as the president in a landslide vote in 2019.

The crisis between the president and parliament has left democracy in danger – if not on life support – in Tunisia, analysts say.

“But more importantly, it means that the real and serious social and economic needs of Tunisians are not being met with no clear path forward,”  Sarah Yerkes, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told TRT World.

“The economy is worse off under Saied’s one-man rule than it was under a democratic Tunisia and instability has increased. Saied is not acting in the best interest of Tunisia or Tunisians.”

Prices of basic goods and services have soared across the country and many businesses have shut down. 

Earlier this month, Tunisia’s powerful UGTT trade union threatened protests against IMF-backed economic reforms and that if they are not included in negotiations over the country’s political and economic future. 

Saied’s government has started talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a loan agreement that will require austerity measures such as subsidy cuts and public sector wage caps. This has already been rejected by the UGTT.

“Tunisia’s external position is already in a dire state and against the backdrop of no IMF deal, low reserves, and being locked out of global capital markets, it further cements our long-held view that the government is heading towards default,” Capital Economics, the London-based consultancy, said in a note on Wednesday.

However, The UGTT trade union leadership is still broadly supportive of the president and his decision to dissolve the parliament, which could help him in the coming days.

Saied is understood to want to form direct democracy that bypasses political parties that analysts say is “right out of the dictator’s playbook”.

“It is not clear what's next for Tunisia. On one hand, Saied is losing more and more public and political support every day. So far, he has not offered any concrete ideas on how to address the challenges facing Tunisians.” Yerkes told TRT World.

“But on the other hand, the opposition parties and civil society groups have been unable to form a widespread coalition capable of countering Saied’s actions.”