The populism of Kais Saïed as a crystallisation of the crisis of the Tunisian parliamentary regime ; Le populisme de Kais Saïed comme cristallisation de la crise du régime parlementaire tunisien

Open Access

Abstract

Ten years after the revolution, the recent proclamation of a state of emergency on 25 July 2021 by the President of the Republic, Kais Saïed, based on an "extensive" reading of Article 80 of the Constitution, appears to be a symptom of the "organic crisis", to use Gramscian terminology, that Tunisia is currently experiencing. In other words, it is the result of the dysfunction of parliamentary political institutions unable to regulate the social tensions generated by the functioning of the "mafia-like rentier regime" set up at the time of President Ben Ali. The popular demonstrations of approval of the decision taken by President Kais Saïed to freeze the work of parliament and to lift the immunity of deputies reflect, on the one hand, a disavowal of the parliamentary institutions created by the 2014 Constitution and, on the other hand, a rejection of the sharing of power, its privileges and rents, between the leading cadres of the Islamo-conservative movement Ennahdha and a part of the elites of the former regime. It remains to be seen whether President Kais Saïed's desire to "correct the trajectory" of the revolution, i.e. to institute a political regime articulating forms of direct democracy and a strong President of the Republic asserting himself as the "mouth of the people", is capable of establishing a new form of governmentality that would resolve the hiatus between representatives and represented, or whether his discourse and practices, which in our opinion are the result of a moralising populism, are the open door to the emergence of an authoritarian regime. ; Dix ans après révolution, la récente proclamation de l'état d'exception le 25 juillet 2021 par le président de la République, Kais Saïed, en s'appuyant sur une lecture « extensive » de l'article 80 de la Constitution apparaît comme le symptôme de la « crise organique », pour reprendre la terminologie gramscienne, que traverse actuellement la Tunisie. Autrement dit, elle est l'aboutissement du dysfonctionnement d'institutions politiques ...