CAIRO — Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, has amassed nearly absolute power over the last eight months — dismissing Parliament, arresting opponents, ruling by decree — in the name of the Tunisian people. On a self-appointed mission to rescue ordinary Tunisians from their corrupt political system and sinking economy, he called upon the people to join a national dialogue this winter in which they would help shape a new constitution.
But only about half a million Tunisians, out of a population of nearly 12 million, participated in the two-month online consultation by the time it ended on Sunday night, according to government statistics.
The low turnout may have reflected problems of access; much of the population lacks an internet connection, particularly in rural areas. But Tunisians and analysts said many people have lost interest in Mr. Saied’s reforms as his promises, greeted with euphoria after his July 25 power grab, have gone unfulfilled.
“This system is both fake and crazy,” said Zayneb Chouchene, 23, an economics student in Tunis who said she had ignored several text messages from the government to promote the online dialogue. “In the end, I doubt that this process will result in anything concrete. I don’t think Kais Saied can change anything, really.”
The economy has gone from stagnant to worse, with jobs for young people scarce and the state falling behind on paying salaries for public employees. Prices of staples such as flour, sugar and oil were already rising before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and that has pushed up prices even more because the two countries supply much of the world’s wheat and fertilizer.
Mr. Saied’s government is negotiating a desperately needed bailout from the International Monetary Fund, but any deal hinges on Tunisia agreeing to cut subsidies and public wages — conditions that, besides being politically unpalatable, will cause further pain to ordinary Tunisians.
About 2,000 people protested against Mr. Saied on Sunday in Tunis, the capital, the latest in a series of demonstrations.
“Most of them do not really care about the political system; they want their socio-economic conditions to change,” said Youssef Cherif, the director of the Columbia Global Centers in Tunis.
He noted that many Tunisians had initially embraced Mr. Saied because they hoped he could turn the economy around, “not because they want to participate in some big political project like the one the president is offering them.”
Mr. Saied, a former constitutional law professor elected in a landslide in 2019, has moved boldly to shake up Tunisia’s politics since he suspended Parliament and took power in what critics call a coup last summer. Ruling by decree since the fall, he has arrested political opponents, restricted or shuttered some media outlets and, earlier this year, dismissed the country’s top judicial body and replaced it with handpicked appointees, drawing accusations that he is sidelining Tunisia’s last independent branch of government.
He has also suspended most of the 2014 constitution, the backbone of Tunisia’s fledgling democracy, the only one to emerge from the 2011 protests that came to be known as the Arab Spring.
According to the road map he laid out last year under pressure from Western governments and international donors, he was to sponsor a national dialogue that would lead to a redrafting of the constitution, followed by a referendum on it this summer and parliamentary elections by year’s end.
Diplomats, donors and Tunisia’s political elite hoped the dialogue would include opposition parties and civil society groups, along the lines of 2013, when the country’s powerful unions helped broker a resolution to a previous political crisis, winning a Nobel Peace Prize in the process. But Mr. Saied’s version turned out to consist of an online survey posing questions to citizens about politics, the economy, education, social affairs and other topics.
“This consultation will allow the Tunisian people, the sole holder of power, to identify the major political and economic reforms to which they aspire, and will set up a democratic framework for deliberation on various proposals that would help to face the various current challenges Tunisian citizens are confronted to in various fields,” the website for the exercise said.
In the end, government statistics showed that among the small number who participated, more than twice as many were men as women, and the vast majority were over 30 in a country where people 15 to 29 make up a third of the population and suffer the most severe unemployment.
Omar Naija, 19, an economics student in Tunis, said he had signed up for the consultation, and then volunteered to help spread the word about the effort, out of a slim hope for change.
“I’d like to stay optimistic, because it’s true that we can’t improve everything in such a short period of time,” he said. But, he said, he sympathized with those who had no such confidence.
“I noticed that people lost interest completely,” he said. “They say they don’t want to have anything to do with this consultation.”
Under Mr. Saied’s road map, a committee of experts handpicked by the president will now draft amendments to the constitution. Though he has not yet revealed his plans, Mr. Saied has in the past strongly pushed for a new political system in which most authority rests with neighborhood-level local councils, except for a strong president.
After the referendum, “everyone will be involved in expressing their opinions and suggestions for the new political system,” Mr. Saied said in a speech on state television on Monday.
Amine Masmoudi, 36, a doctor from the coastal city of Sousse, said that while he usually participated in elections and followed politics closely, he had declined to register for the consultation because it seemed aimed more at validating Mr. Saied’s ideas than at truly hearing Tunisians out. If it wanted more and deeper engagement from the public, he said, the government should have partnered with civil society and political groups.
“It seems much more like a vote of confidence for the president of the republic,” he said. “He might force something through by saying that, for example, 500,000 Tunisians wanted it. It’s really something that makes me a little scared.”
But Mr. Cherif, the analyst, said the results showed the opposite: that Mr. Saied had lost the confidence of many Tunisians, who “don’t follow whatever he’s saying just because he’s saying it.”
Massinissa Benlakehal contributed reporting from Tunis, Tunisia.
