How Kais Saied's tyranny went from tragedy to farce

Tunisia's President Kais Saied has won a second term.

In the days that followed the 6 October election, this phrase surprised no one yet disappointed many, moving from grim prediction to depressing reality.

The initial pronouncement by an obscure polling company that Saied won with 89 percent of the vote perhaps drew a chuckle from Tunisians old enough to remember their last tyrant, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, winning his last election with the exact same majority.

It was later officially announced as 91 percent, a derisory attempt to show Saied's power and popularity. But to paraphrase the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, if you have to fix an election to tell everyone you are powerful and popular, then you really aren't.

Saied, who is 66, once quipped that, like Charles de Gaulle, he was too old to start a new career as a dictator. Yet he is now tragicomically trudging down Ben Ali's path.

Like his predecessor, this will likely be Saied's last election. The real question is whether this is because he will complete Ben Ali's tragedy or if other forces will usurp him first.

'Clumsy tyranny'

Oddly, for an election, the defining moments of the recent vote included everything but the result itself: The subordination of the electoral commission and the courts, the convoluted candidature process, the arrest of competition, the growing street protests building up to the big day, and the poor turnout for the vote itself  - the lowest in Tunisian history for a presidential election.

Kais Saied will be known as a fierce authoritarian leader who depended on handouts to prop up a failing economy

These moments reinforce a narrative of Saied as a weak strongman - a fitting title for a politician defined by his paradoxes.

He'll be known as a fierce authoritarian leader who depended on handouts to prop up a failing economy. He was a constitutional law lecturer who imposed a political project that was an even more dysfunctional version of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's much-maligned Jamahiriya.

He had pledged not to become Europe's border guard before doing just that, damaging African relations and social cohesion in the process.

As president, Saied advocates for a strong state while neurotically reducing Tunisia's administrative machine to an ever-smaller, constantly changing circle around the president.  

Saied, pressured into this election by allies who repeatedly reminded him he needed to retain constitutional legitimacy, tried to mimic his counterparts, Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Algeria's Abdelmadjid Tebboune by entrenching and re-legitimising himself through a stage-managed election.

But fierce opposition to his clumsy tyranny and the low turnout means the event only weakened him.

This doesn't augur well for Tunisia's crumbling state.

A weaker Saied means a more anxious Saied, who will more jealously gather all decision-making authority. He will continue to strip all institutions of their independence, and Tunisia's systemic problems will be confronted by one less-than-capable man.

And these problems are severe.

Tunisia is facing its largest-ever debt repayment obligations, as large principal payments on older debts combine with high-interest fees from recent loans. State-owned companies, the pillars of Tunisian employment, marketplaces and subsidy systems, are also buckling under debt obligations.

Without a bailout, Saied relies on Tunisian banks for credit, killing any hopes of growth and devaluing Tunisia's currency.

As the situation worsens, Saied will keep compensating for his lack of political virility with brutal repression and ruthless scapegoating.

A recent viral video of a policeman warning protestors that this would be their last time on Tunis' main thoroughfare, Habib Bourguiba Avenue, claiming they're not responsible enough to protest, paints that future malevolently.

It's also an ominous reminder that while Saied deconstructs Tunisia's once proud bureaucracy, the security sector booms.

After all, Saied may have been the face of Tunisia's authoritarian turn since 2021, but Tunisia's military made and sustained his coup.

The army remains Tunisia's most powerful intelligence force, a legacy of its 2017 counter-terror drive.

While Saied's cabinet grows increasingly dysfunctional, his National Security Council makes more decisions. And as the president's prickly personality weakens Tunisia's international relations, Tunisia's military partnership with the US deepens.

So, as Tunisia's public and private sectors get poorer, Uncle Sam's military aid keeps Tunisia's military flush.

Tunisia's security sector embraced Saied's coup because they considered it an opportunity to return to the familiar order of one-man rule after the political chaos of pluralism.

Regional tensions

But now that Tunisia's democracy is securely straitjacketed, how long will the people tolerate Saied's own-brand chaos before they feel compelled to intervene once more?

These dynamics, which have condemned Tunisia to authoritarian devolution, are only exacerbated by the involvement of its neighbour.

The decision of which path Tunisia takes and which precedent it will set for the region depends on how much economic and institutional damage Saied does before he moves on

Tunisia's turn has already borrowed much from Algeria's playbook, from using the cover of Covid-19 to enforce a new oppressive order to the mechanisms to ensure election outcomes, and even increasing military encroachment into domestic politics.

But Tunisia isn't Algeria. It lacks its deep state and oil wealth, meaning Tunisia isn't becoming a new Algeria. Tebboune is Saied's mentor, and Algerian energy and financing keeps Tunisia's lights on and its shelves stocked.

Tunisia's authoritarian stability is therefore maintained by an Algiers hoping Tunisia can be a useful force multiplier.

An early example of this could be seen in the rekindled Arab Maghreb Union meeting Tebboune orchestrated in Tunis last year, involving Saied, Libya's Mohamed el-Menfi (and notably, no Morocco).

This exposes Tunisia to increasing regional volatility as the arms race between Rabat and Algiers spirals. Algeria threatens military interventions in Libya as it feels threatened by a perceived Russian-Emirati-Moroccan axis currently storming the Sahel.

Tunisia, once the torchbearer of the "Arab Spring" generation, is once again the torchbearer of new trends. It moved away from political liberalisation and towards economic breakdown, militarised authoritarianism and regional power struggles.

The decision of which path Tunisia takes and which precedent it will set for the region depends on how much economic and institutional damage Saied does before he moves on.

What remains unclear is whether the hand that pushes him comes from the military, Algiers or a Tunisian population finally forced out of its post-revolutionary nihilism.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.