The challenges ahead

When President Mohamed Béji Caïd Essebsi died, on 25 July 2019, Tunisia called for early elections, with a first round on September 15, just before the parliamentary elections of October 6. The runoff for the presidential contest was held on October 13, awarding a landslide 72.71 percent victory to Kais Saied, a professor of constitutional law who put forward a conservative, antisystem agenda calling for radical change and a new slate of incoming leaders for a refreshed power structure in Tunisia.

On the back of an ailing economy that was barely showing any sign of recovery—with high youth unemployment, high inflation, and a rising public debt— the parliamentary elections held on October 6 completed the realignment by unseating the old establishment guard in large numbers (cf. Frettoli 2020, 1), with a blow to the two main parties in the governing coalition, al-Nahda and Nidaa Tonnes. Despite the setback, the former still managed to win over the largest share of the electorate, with 19.6 percent of the votes and 52 seats. Nidaa Tonnes, for its part, having split up, received only 1.5 percent of the votes, while many of those who had previously voted for Nidaa Tonnes switched to two of its splinter groups, both centre-leaning, namely, Tahya Tonnes and Qalb Tonnes, which took in 4.08 percent and 14.5 percent, respectively.

After a first failed attempt, President Kais Saied entrusted the task of forming a new government to Elyes Fakhfakh, who had served as finance minister from 2011 to 2013, and who in the end managed to secure the confidence of the Assemblée des Représentants du Peuple. The new government contains a plurality of heterogenous forces: al-Nahda; two centre-left parties, Ettayar (Democratic Current) and Echaâb (People’s Movement); Tahya Tonnes; and Le Bloc de la Réforme Nationale. Given the array of opposing visions and ideologies gathered under this big tent, it will be essential for the new prime minister to try to hold them together cohesively (ISPI 2020). But the greater challenge will continue to be the economy, with a cash-strapped government, 15 percent unemployment, and inflation at 6.7 percent—a daunting problem to attack which Fakhfakh has introduced an ambitious recovery plan based on a broad social pact.

Tunisia is still looking at an uncertain future, to be sure, a road paved with potential pitfalls, but its ability to overcome the existential crises it has been confronted with since Ben Ali fled the country in January 2011 suggests that it has the resourcefulness it needs to face the challenges looming ahead. Democracy is a learning process, and the Tunisian democracy is learning at a rapid pace.

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