Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Tunisia President Defends Proposed Constitution amid Criticism


Tue 05 Jul 2022 | 07:38 PM
Mohamed Helba

In response to criticism from across the political spectrum, Tunisia's president declared on Tuesday that his new constitution would not bring back authoritarian control. He also urged people to support it in the vote this month.

Saied has issued a draught of a new constitution that would significantly increase his powers while eliminating constraints on his behaviour. Saied removed the elected parliament last summer to rule by decree in a move his detractors label a coup.

Supporters of the president claim that he is taking on powerful elites whose incompetence and corruption have doomed Tunisia to a decade of political gridlock and economic stagnation.

He claimed that the rights and liberties of Tunisians were not at jeopardy in a letter that was made public online.

"Everyone knows what Tunisia has suffered for decades, especially the last decade. They emptied state coffers. The poor got poorer, the corrupt got richer," Said said, accusing critics of his constitution of "slanders, far from reality".

The majority of political parties and civil society organisations are against his constitution, arguing that it was drafted unilaterally and lacks legitimacy because Tunisians have less than four weeks to decide on it and there is no requirement for a certain percentage of the population to vote in favour of it.

The largest union for journalists joined those who oppose the constitution and released the following statement on Tuesday: "We issue a dire warning. It doesn't adhere to the values of press and expression freedom ".

Following the 2011 uprising that ousted the late President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, freedom of expression and the press has been a major victory for Tunisians.

This weekend, the president's version of the constitution was deemed "hazardous" and "paves the way for a shameful authoritarian dictatorship" by even the chairman of the committee Saied assembled to develop the original version, which he later revised.

The version Saied had submitted did not reflect the document the committee had created, according to the committee's head Sadok Belaid.