The President has been awarded by decree the power to limit judges and forbids them to strike.
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This is a new seoncise for Tunisian magistrates. A week after dissolving the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM), an independent body responsible for appointing the judges, President Kaïs Saïed promulgated a decree on Sunday, February 13, to replace him with a provisional instance. The judges who will compose this new council will have to be approved by the Presidency of the Government and the President of the Republic, which can also revoke them or request their mutation.
The head of state, who has never made mystère of his desire to recall the judicial system since his stroke of July 25, 2021, reaffirmed to want “to clean up justice”, while ensuring his Independence.
“If the decree is implemented, this will sound the knell of judicial independence in the country,” said Saïd Benarbia lawyer, director for the North Africa Region of the International Commission of Jurists, which denounces ” a serious and characterized violation of the principles of the rule of law and the separation of powers “.
Indeed, with this new instance, “the President directly appoints and influences the appointment of all members of this proceeding, unlike the former CSM, where an internal election process made it possible to guarantee better protection of The independence of justice “, continues the lawyer. The new decree also prohibits magistrates to strike or “any collective action” likely to “disturb the normal functioning of the jurisdictions”.
No massive mobilization
The decision of Kaïs Saïed has again generated a toll among the magistrates and within the civil society, four days after a hundred judges and lawyers have shown before the Tunis courthouse against the dissolution of the CSM. . The Union of Administrative Magistrates has called in a statement to “boycott this new instance”.
Semnants gathered Sunday, the appeal of the Islamo-Conservative Party Ennahda and the Citizen Collective against the Coup d’etat, protested against the last decisions of the President. But this street opposition remains circumscribed at a fringe of public opinion. The gradual dismantling of the Tunisian democratic institutions committed since Kaïs Saïed has arrogated the full powers does not arouse massive and unanimous mobilization.
According to Amine Ghali, Director of the Al-Kawakibi Center, a research association on the democratic transition, “only the deterioration of economic conditions can lead to a collective awareness”. The fate of the bodies created after the revolution concerns little the majority of Tunisians, tired of years of political instability.
Civil society is worried about Kaïs Saïited’s way. In recent days, several Tunisian media echoed a government bill that wants to submit the creation of an association to a prior administrative authorization and provides very restrictive control for foreign funding.