Five Years After Saied’s Power Grab, Tunisia’s Old Grievances Return

“Employment, freedom and national dignity,” the slogan of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, is again being heard across the country. But the pressures behind it have changed little: water cuts, electricity outages, rising prices, medicine shortages and the struggle to afford daily necessities.

The anger is resurfacing five years after President Kais Saied suspended parliament, dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and lifted parliamentary immunity on July 25, 2021. Saied presented the move as a response to a national crisis and a way to overcome political paralysis and corruption. Many Tunisians initially welcomed it after years of government changes, political disputes and limited economic progress.

The decade after Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster brought competitive elections and wider space for parties and civil society, but it did not resolve the country’s core economic problems. Unemployment remained particularly high among young people and residents of Tunisia’s interior. Public services stayed weak, while inflation continued to squeeze household incomes. The World Bank put unemployment at 17.4 percent at the end of 2020.

Security threats, including attacks and political assassinations, added to the strain and hurt sectors such as tourism. Those conditions helped Saied gain support as an outsider promising to break with a political establishment many citizens viewed as dysfunctional.

Since then, Saied has dissolved parliament and overseen a new constitution that strengthened presidential powers. Opposition figures, journalists, lawyers and activists have been jailed or prosecuted. Rights groups describe cases such as the “conspiracy case” as politically motivated and part of a broader crackdown on dissent. The result is a familiar economic frustration unfolding in a political system with far less room for challenge.

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Employment, freedom and national dignity