Kais Saied, a president on a “divine mission” to save Tunisia

Photo: Slim Abid Archives Associated Press Clean-shaven, balding and with a slender figure, Kais Saied has promised to “rebuild a new Tunisia” after a first term devoted to fighting “against the forces of conspiracy under foreign influence.”

Kaouther Larbi – Agence France-Presse and Aymen Jamli – Agence France-Presse in Tunis

Published at 10:15 Updated at 11:01

• Afrique

President Kais Saied, who has been in sole charge of Tunisia for three years and is expected to win Sunday's election according to initial estimates, is convinced that he has a “divine mission” to save his country from external “plots.”

Democratically elected in 2019 under the slogan “The people want,” Mr. Saied, 66, was applauded by jubilant crowds when he granted himself full powers on July 25, 2021, to, he assured, respond to political and economic blockages.

Three years later, Amnesty International points to “a worrying decline in fundamental rights in the cradle of the Arab Spring” and “an authoritarian turn”, unraveling the gains of the Revolution that overthrew the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

In February 2022, the former assistant professor in constitutional law dissolved the High Council of the Judiciary, “the last bastion of judicial impartiality”, according to Amnesty, and reorganized the leadership of the electoral authority Isie as he wished.

In the summer of 2022, he had a constitutional revision adopted by referendum, reestablishing an ultra-presidential system similar to the regimes of Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987) and Ben Ali (1987-2011), transforming Parliament into a chamber recording.

Read also

• Tunisia's outgoing president predicted winner of election

Starting in February 2023, political figures and businessmen who were trying to form a front of opponents were arrested, followed in 2024 by trade unionists, community activists and well-known political commentators. The majority of them are still in prison.

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

“Hindered by hidden hands”

Clean-shaven, balding and slender, Kais Saied has promised to “rebuild a new Tunisia”, after a first term devoted to fighting “against the forces of conspiracy under foreign influence” that have “infiltrated many public services and disrupted hundreds of projects”.

A speech that works with his supporters.

Slah Assali, his former 45-year-old mechanic in Tunis, describes to AFP “a serious person who works a lot, but is constantly bothered by hidden hands”.

Imed Mehimdi, 45, a café waiter who has known him for 20 years, believes that after having “put the country back on track” in the face of “mafia and corruption”, Mr. Saied will “get the train moving again”.

Over the past five years, Kais Saied, who became known by deciphering the Constitution on television, has only given a few press conferences. His communication is limited to videos on the presidency's Facebook page, where, in a strict suit and tie, he is the only one to speak.

Anthropologist Youssef Seddik, who met him regularly before the 2019 election, was “struck by his kindness and his ability to listen” which “contrast with his stiffness” today.

In three years, he has changed prime ministers three times and dismissed dozens of ministers.

For Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesperson for the NGO Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), the president “does not believe in the role of intermediaries between the people and him.” He “considers that he has a divine revolutionary mission” to “realize the will of the people.”

But beyond promises of a new “war of national liberation and self-determination” for Tunisia, his project remains ill-defined.

“Diktats”

In his speeches, he does not hesitate to criticize international institutions, such as the IMF, whose “dictates” and a loan of two billion dollars he has refused, or civil society, which he accuses of “receiving enormous sums from abroad.”

To his promise to revive the economy with phosphate or “citizen companies”, a sort of self-managed cooperative, economists oppose sluggish growth, high unemployment (16%) and heavy debt (80% of GDP).

On the international level, he is very close to neighboring Algeria, which supports Tunisia with credits and shipments of hydrocarbons at friendly prices.

A defender of pan-Arabism, Kais Saied shows his support for the cause Palestinian. It has moved closer to China, Iran and Russia, even though the European Union remains its main trading partner and donor, and the United States its arms supplier.

Born in 1958 in Beni Khiar, near Nabeul (central-east) in a middle-class family, conservative on morals (notably homosexuality), he is married to the magistrate Ichraf Chebil and is the father of two girls and a boy. He taught constitutional law until his retirement in 2018.

A lover of classical Arabic music and calligraphy, he writes his important messages in ink and pen.