Tunisian President Kais Saied during a European Union-African Union summit, in Brussels, Belgium, February 18, 2022. JOHANNA GERON / REUTERS
A new Parliament with very limited prerogatives and resulting from shunned elections was inaugurated Monday, March 13 in Tunisia, 20 months after the dismantling of the old assembly by President Kaïs Saïed to establish a hyper-presidentialist system.
The new Assembly of People’s Representatives (ARP), elected in rounds in December and January marked by massive abstention (nearly 89%), held its first meeting, broadcast live by public television, in its headquarters in Bardo , in the suburbs close to Tunis.
“What is happening is dangerous”
Only official Tunisian media were allowed to cover the session and representatives of the private press and foreign journalists were kept away, according to an AFP correspondent. “What is happening is dangerous and reflects an unjustified distrust of the authorities towards the media“, told AFP Amira Mohamed, vice-president of the Syndicate of Tunisian journalists.
The new Parliament was elected on the basis of a new Constitution that President Kaïs Saïed had adopted by referendum on July 25, 2022, one year after assuming full power by suspending the old assembly before dissolving it and dismissing the government. The Constitution established a hyper-presidentialist system and practically reduced to nothing the powers of Parliament, which was the real center of power in the system in place after the fall of the dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali following the first Arab Spring revolt in 2011.
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The new Parliament has 161 MPs but only 154 seats have been filled so far. It has only 25 women. After having taken the oath, the deputies must proceed to the election of the president of the Parliament and his two deputies. The main opposition coalition to President Kais Saied, the National Salvation Front (FSN), said in a statement that it did not recognize the new parliament “resulting from a putschist Constitution and elections shunned by the overwhelming majority of voters“. The main force in the Parliament dissolved in 2021, the Islamo-conservative Ennahdha party also affirmed in a press release its refusal to recognize “a parliamentary assembly devoid of any legitimacy“.
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