Tunisia President Suspends Parliament as Covid Fuels Unrest

(Bloomberg) -- Tunisian President Kais Saied fired his prime minister and suspended parliament, a move that critics assailed as threatening to derail the only surviving democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring.

Saied took action late Sunday after masses of largely young people demonstrated in the capital, Tunis, and other cities calling for the fall of the government and railing against hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The moderate Islamist Ennahda party, which is the dominant force in parliament, accused him of carrying out a coup.

The stakes are huge for the North African nation, where the 2011 revolution that unseated the country’s long-serving president sparked unprecedented upheaval across the region. Politics have been bitterly contested in the country ever since, and the current tensions hint at broader shifts at play. Since coming to power in 2019, Saied has strengthened ties with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, states with zero tolerance for Islamists.

Units of the Tunisian army were deployed in front of parliament and state television headquarters, and the TV station broadcast songs in praise of the military. Clashes erupted between Ennahda and Saied loyalists near parliament on Monday.

The new turmoil sent Tunisia’s dollar bonds due 2025 tumbling below 85 cents on the dollar, sending the yield to 11.4%, the highest since April 2020. The benchmark Tunisian stock index fell as much as 1%, the most intraday since May 5.

The president, who invoked a special provision in the constitution granting him broader authority, said he acted to ward off potential violence and would appoint a replacement for Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, whom he named last year. He also lifted immunity for lawmakers.

“We don’t want bloodshed,” Saied, a constitutional law expert, said in a televised speech. “Whoever shoots a bullet, the armed forces will confront him with many bullets.”

There is little legal recourse for critics of the move because Tunisia hasn’t yet appointed a promised constitutional court.

The decision to freeze parliament “has brought Tunisia to a new constitutional crisis that is far more acute,” Barclays analysts Brahim Razgallah and Michael Kafe wrote in a research note. The development adds “heightened risks to political and social volatility in coming weeks.”

Power struggles between Ennahda and more secular political forces since 2011 have blocked Tunisia from addressing key concerns such as unemployment, corruption, economic stagnation and investment. The country has had more than 10 governments in the past decade, and the election of Saied -- a professor without standard political affiliations -- was seen as a repudiation of the status quo.

But his disputes with Mechichi over how to extricate the country from its crises have crippled decision-making.

Read more: Tunisia Holds Interest Rate as It Targets IMF Deal by July (1)

In a video posted on the party’s official page, Rashid Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s leader and the speaker of parliament, said the nation was “facing a coup attempt in the name of the constitution.” He called on the “youth of the revolution” and security forces to preserve the nation’s institutions, and urged supporters to take to the streets.

Read also: Tunisia’s Islamist House Speaker Survives Vote to Oust Him

Yet for many Tunisians, it’s the establishment officials who are to blame for the country’s current ills.

“This ruling system, especially Ennahda, contributed to our starvation and impoverishment and even failed to provide vaccines to combat the coronavirus,” said Kholoud al-Sayeh, a 25-year-old activist. “The game is over for all of them. They have to leave.”

Tunisia’s economy contracted by 3% in the first quarter of 2021, and a record 8.6% in 2020, according to the central bank. Talks with the International Monetary Fund for a new program have so far failed to net results. A new program is seen as key to restoring investor confidence and accessing other financing.

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