Support slogans or worry about an autocratic drift rushed into the streets of the Tunisian capital.
Le Monde with Reuters
“down the coup” on one side, “all with Kaïs Saïed” on the other: hundreds of opponents and supporters of the Tunisian President demonstrated on Friday 17 December in Tunis in a context of exacerbated tensions, on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the 2011 revolution. These events occur a few days after Mr. Saïed, who embroacted the full powers on July 25, prolonged one-year frost on Monday of Parliament – dominated by the Islamist-inspired party Ennahdha, his black beast – until the holding of legislative news on December 17, 2022.
In advance, it intends to reform the Constitution of 2014 that it deems too unbalanced in favor of Parliament. Constitutional amendments and the electoral law will be submitted to a referendum on July 25, 2022.
Just over a thousand people opposed to Mr. Saïed have massaged at the entrance of the city center, blocked by significant police cords, found AFP journalists. “The people want what you do not want”, he wants “the fall of the system”, “down the coup!” Or “Freedoms! Freedoms! The time of the police state is over!” And “The people want to dismiss the president,” they punctuate.
A little further, nearly 200 supporters of the president were gathered in front of the Municipal Theater on Bourguiba Avenue, Central Artery of the Capital. With for slogans: “The people want to clean up justice” or “the people want to judge the corrupts”.
“The street will change”
“The street will decide. We will not give up ten years of democracy,” says Samira, 42, opposed to the president. Ibrahim, 50, recognizes that the socio-economic situation is down but it considers that “it does not justify a coup. “We are against the coup and the last measures of the president,” says Abdellatif Mekki, former executive officer of Ennahda, for whom Mr. Saïed “will grab the power for another year, with an agenda that n that has no sense “.
Sign of increasing polarization of the street, the tone is quite different among the presidents of the president. Mouna Akremi, a milf who came to support the head of state, believes that “for ten years, the Revolution was stolen by the Muslim brothers who diverted the claims of the people”.
Patriotic songs are broadcast while protesters have pancarts and banners in favor of President Saïed, clamant “with you until the end to fight corruption!”.
“We have lived a black decade of impaired, hunger and poverty. Economic indicators are down,” says AFP Nacer Medjabri, from Kairouan (South-West), wishing “a democratic system from of the people “.
For Youssef Cherif, the Columbia Global Centers Research Center, “Public Opinion is largely passive” because “the majority of the population is disenchanted by the political class” Even S ‘”there is an active minority that goes Protest and continue to tackle the presidential measures and describe them as illegitimate or even putschists “.
Date change
m. Saïed decided at the beginning of the month to celebrate the anniversary of the Tunisian revolution on December 17, the day of the immolation of an ambulant vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, eleven years ago in Sidi Bouzid (center-east). His gesture had aroused demonstrations in Tunisia, then a broad movement of protest in other countries in the region: the Arab Spring.
The birthday was until then fixed on January 14, the day of the flight of the ex-dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, supposed to mark the end of the revolution. But for Mr. Saïed, the date of January 14 was not appropriate because the revolution remains in its unfinished eyes.
After the United States, who welcomed on Tuesday “a calendar providing for the political reform and parliamentary elections”, the European Union has qualified Friday the ads of Mr. Saïited “important step towards the Restoration of institutional stability and balance “, while calling for respect for” the democratic acquis, of the separation of powers, the rule of law and freedom and fundamental rights “.