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Written by Piero Messina
What can you do if you have just realized that you have destroyed the nation you govern and you realize that popular protest threatens to become revolution? It’s simple: you have to shout conspiracy. Tunisian plenipotentiary president Kais Saied knows this old rule. Thus, while on the one hand he continues to order arrest warrants against his political opponents, Saied cries of conspiracy. He has finally found Tunisia’s real enemy: they are the sub-Saharan migrants who cross the African continent and arrive on the beaches of Tunisia to try to cross the Strait of Sicily and reach Europe. Saied sostiene una tesi particolare. Prima di tutto ricorda a se stesso e alla sua Nazione che la Tunisia, prima ancora di essere africana, è una terra araba e musulmana. La sua tesi è semplice. Kais Saied has alleged that undocumented immigration from sub-Saharan African countries is aimed at changing Tunisia’s demographic composition.
Here’s what Saied said during a meeting of the National Security Council on last Tuesday followed the arrests of dozens of migrants this month in a crackdown:”The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations,” Saied said, adding that the influx of irregular migrants must quickly be ended. He added that unnamed parties had over the past decade settled African migrants in Tunisia in return for money, according to comments published by the presidency online.
Just a few days ago, Saied had met with a delegation from the Italian government to lay the foundations for a common strategy to combat illegal immigration.
Saied’s words were contested by civil rights activists.Activists, who had this week already condemned what they call hate speech directed at African migrants, said the president’s comments were racist.v”It is a racist approach just like the campaigns in Europe,” Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesperson for the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. “The presidential campaign aims to create an imaginary enemy for Tunisians to distract them from their basic problems.”
It is not the first time that Saied has evoked the existence of a conspiracy against Tunisia. Just two months ago, Saied had argued that basic foodstuffs “are available within the Tunisian market, but there are shortages in order to aggravate the situation” in the North African country.
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In reality, a conspiracy against Tunisia really exists. It wouldn’t be difficult for Saied to find out who is behind a strategy that is destroying the country of jasmine, rendering the 2011 revolution in vain. It would be enough for Saied to look in the mirror.
Saied demolished all the constitutional principles of the country, rewrote the constitutional paper for his own use and consumption, canceled the parliament, called sham elections. With his economic policy he has demolished what little remained of the Tunisian economy, already tested by the crisis generated by the Covid 2019 pandemic.
The last chance to revive Tunisia was the loan requested from the International Monetary Fund. But the Financial Authority has blocked everything, at least for now. The international financial institution was supposed to announce its final decision on whether or not to approve the loan on December 19, but this did not happen.
Tunisia’s credibility on an economic level no longer exists. The latest downgrade by Moody’s of Tunisia’s sovereign rating from “Caa1” to “Caa2”, with a negative outlook, shows that “the country is now judged to be at very high risk”. Expert economist Ezzedine Saidane said on the radio station “Shems fm”, explaining that Moody’s classification includes 20 positions and Tunisia currently occupies the 18th place: going down another level would mean bankruptcy and, therefore, recourse to the Paris Club to renegotiate debt.
Thus, while President Saied plays at being the end-of-empire dictator, for weeks in Tunisia a series of basic food products such as milk, coffee and sugar have been almost unobtainable. Insensitive to calls for democracy from what remains of the political world, the president continues to crush opponents. In the last week, at least ten opposition figures have been arrested, without anyone knowing the charges leveled against them.
In the European media, the Tunisian chaos finds no space. But what is happening in Tunis and its surroundings does not go unnoticed by those who do business and have to invest in Tunisia. As of this weekend, major international tour operators have stopped selling travel packages to Tunisia. Tourism represents almost 9 percent of the country’s GDP and is the main source of foreign currency supply.
