A reform of the Constitution will be developed following an online consultation, then will be organized a referendum in July and the parliamentary elections in December.
Le Monde
At the end of November, he insured “prepare the exit” of the state of exception. Three weeks later, the Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed announced that he extended the suspension of Parliament until the holding of new parliamentary elections, in December 2022.
In a speech to the nation, Monday, December 13, Mr. Saïed also announced the Organization, from the beginning of January 1, of a series of “popular” consultations including constitutional and electoral amendments. “Parliament will remain suspended until the organization of new elections,” said Mr. Saïed, which returns de facto to dissolve the current chamber – he had frozen by arrogating the full powers, July 25th. “New legislative elections will take place on December 17, 2022 on the basis of a new electoral law,” he added.
This new law, as well as constitutional amendments, will be prepared in the context of popular consultations that will take place “from the 1 January until March 20″. “Constitutional and other reforms will be submitted to referendum on July 25, 2022, the anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic,” he added.
In the middle of socio-economic and sanitary crisis and after months of political blocking, Mr. Saïed, elected by universal suffrage at the end of 2019, summoned on 25 July an “imminent danger” to limit the Prime Minister, suspend Parliament’s activities and take control of the judiciary.
By suspending the Parliament, Mr. Saïed has effectively dismissed the Islamist-inspired party Ennahdha, the main parliamentary force and pillar of successive government coalitions since the fall of the Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali regime, overthrown in 2011.
After two months of uncertainties, he promulgated, on 22 September, a decree that formalizes the suspension of several chapters of the Constitution and establishes “exceptional measures”, supposed to be provisional, the time to carry out “political reforms “, including amendments to the 2014 Constitution. In October, he appointed a university without political experience, Najla Bouden, at the head of a new government with considerably reduced prerogatives.
Change of Constitution
The President repeats that the current constitution, which has introduced a rather parliamentary hybrid system in 2014, is dysfunctional. “If the people can no longer exercise his sovereignty because the text [the Constitution] does not allow him anymore, a new text must be developed. The constitutions are not eternal,” he said by presiding over the Council of Ministers , shortly before his speech.
Refusing a report from the Court of Auditors that accuses Ennahdha and other parties for receiving foreign funding, Mr. Saïed said before his ministers that “received and continued [have] to receive From the money from abroad [had] not their place in Parliament, “piling up the threat of dissolving the room. “They received millions of dollars and euros from abroad in previous elections [in 2019],” he added.
After the president’s boost in July, Tunisian and international organizations criticized “grabbing of power” and expressed their fears for the rights and freedoms in the cradle of “Arab Spring”. His detractors accused him of having led a “coup d’état”.
“What coup d’état speak? They also talk about the power of one man and infringement of the freedoms, but who was arrested or prosecuted for expressed his opinions or to have manifested”, s Is it defended in his speech. “There will never be back back,” he said. “Those who want to bring us back must know that the people and history have rejected them.”
A few days before this speech, the ambassadors of the member countries of the Seven (G7) and the European Union (EU) in Tunisia have called for a “rapid” return to democratic institutions in the country.