Tunis, Tunisia – More than 15 years after Tunisians rose up to topple longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, familiar grievances are again being heard on the streets from north to south. A slogan from the 2011 revolution is being heard again: “employment, freedom and national dignity”. This time, those demands are being fuelled by water cuts, electricity outages, rising prices, medicine shortages and a struggle to make ends meet, problems increasingly affecting Tunisians across social and economic divides.
But the anger is unfolding in a very different political environment. The discontent comes as Tunisia marks five years since President Kais Saied suspended parliament, dismissed the government and began ruling by decree, moves he described as necessary to end years of political paralysis and corruption. Many Tunisians welcomed the move at the time, frustrated with a political system that had failed to address the country’s economic problems after the 2011 revolution.
Five years later, many of those grievances remain while the political space for challenging those in power has narrowed sharply. The decade that followed Ben Ali’s ouster brought competitive elections and greater space for political parties and civil society, but it also brought frequent government changes, political disputes and little improvement in the lives of many Tunisians. Unemployment remained high, particularly among young people and in the country’s interior.
Public services remained weak while rising prices continued to put pressure on household incomes. By the end of 2020, unemployment stood at 17.4 percent, according to the World Bank. Tunisia also faced serious security threats, including attacks and political assassinations, adding to economic pressures and hitting sectors such as tourism.
Those frustrations helped Saied build support as an outsider promising to break with the traditional political establishment and what many Tunisians saw as a dysfunctional system. On July 25, 2021, Saied suspended the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and lifted parliamentary immunity. He said he was acting to address a national crisis.
His opponents described the move as a coup. Saied later dissolved parliament and oversaw the adoption of a new constitution in 2022 that significantly strengthened presidential powers. Since then, opposition figures, journalists, lawyers and activists have been jailed or prosecuted in cases that rights groups describe as politically motivated.
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