The political situation in Tunisia looks like a stalemate where President Kais Saied can neither back down nor move forward. Any setback is equivalent to an admission of failure which is worth resignation. Any advance would look like a forcing with heavy consequences.
Because what was expected and anticipated by all happened. Tunisians massively boycotted the legislative elections to which President Kais Saied invited them. This spectacular abstention confirmed the attitude of defiance with regard to the change of the constitution by referendum when the Tunisian president tried to weave an institutional costume of irremovable dictator.
Kaïs Saïed is a caricature of himself. Already presented as a UFO coming from nowhere, the president entertains the national and international gallery with an unimaginable speaking style. A jerky flow as if he came out of the movie Terminator, an extra-rigid attitude reminiscent of the thirties with its flowering of dictators, Kaïs Saïed easily endorsed the nickname of Robocop, at first affectionate, but over time, distressing.
Because Tunisians initially welcomed this character who breaks all codes and who puts an end to long years of what looked like political mismanagement, made up of political corruption and institutional stagnation.
But these same Tunisians are quickly disillusioned. The true face of Kais Saied has come to light. Despotic and authoritarian, and under the pretext of fighting against the Islamist movement, he carried out a political coup to seize all the levers of power. In this, the Tunisian president wanted to imitate the Egyptian precedent. Except that in his fight against the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Mohamed Morsi, the Egyptian president had him with the entire army and a large majority of Egyptian opinion. Is not Sissi who wants!
Kais Saied has neither the army nor Tunisian public opinion with him. Its only political and economic supporting wall is the Algerian regime. He voluntarily put himself under the orders of the Algerian agenda in the region. As shown by its antagonistic relationship with Morocco and its reception of Brahim Ghali, alias Benbatouche, president of the fanciful Sahrawi republic during the Africa-Japan summit.
Moreover, since Kaïs Saïed stood up at the orders of the Algerian brass, pushing certain Algerian commentators to consider Tunisia as an Algerian provincial, his fall into hell is programmed.
Kaïs Saïed faces a double challenge. First, there is his flagrant failure to convince Tunisians of the relevance of his political project. The historically low abstention rate and the multiple calls for his resignation underline both his loneliness and the impasse towards which he is leading the country.
The other challenge concerns international partners. If the Algerian neighbor is going to exploit this Tunisian dependence to the dregs, it will not be able to replace aid and international economic facilities, in particular those of the IMF, likely to lessen the effects of the crisis.
If the French President, Emmanuel Macron, has repeatedly promised to help Kaïs Saïed, he could not do so, despite all his good will, in the face of such a loss of credibility and such spectacular loneliness.
The American administration, contrary to the French perception, does not take gloves to criticize the dictatorial turn of Kais Saied. It demands greater political integration in Tunisia. Which is equivalent to telling the Tunisian president to abandon his vocation as an irremovable dictator. What by conviction, he is incapable today.
Currently, Tunisia is experiencing a sequence of great danger. The economic crisis, coupled with the political deadlock, can lead to instability and unprecedented haemorrhage in this country considered by many to be the cradle of the Arab springs.
And obviously the evocation of the Islamist danger whose existence is undoubtedly real, and the excuse for its eradication, did not convince the Tunisians to give their confidence and their support to the political project of Kais Saied. He remained alone, isolated, in total failure in his attempt to create a parliament that can neither censure the government nor dismiss the president.
The whole question today is to know until when is this Tunisian situation tenable in the presence of a political class in total rupture with the president? of a Tunisian opinion in a posture of defiance with regard to the Palace of Carthage? and of an international community nourished by the feeling of distrust which refuses to endorse the creation of a dictatorship with assumed authoritarian impulses?
The answer to these questions depends on the social and political stability of this country.