Moncef Marzouki, Tunisia’s first president after the 2011 revolution, says he fears what may happen if he goes home.
In an interview with Al Jazeera ahead of Tunisia’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, Marzouki said the country’s current leader, Kais Saied, was part of a “counter-revolution” against the 2011 uprising and attempting to return to the pre-revolution political system, starting with the new constitution the president introduced after a July referendum.
Saied is a populist figure who was elected as Tunisia’s president in 2019 on a platform that blamed the country’s economic woes on the political elite that had run Tunisia since 2011 – including people like Marzouki.
Since then, he has gradually entrenched himself in power. Prior to the new referendum, which changed the country’s system from a hybrid parliamentary one to a presidential system, he suspended and then dismissed parliament in July 2021, and opponents have accused him of returning what had been regarded as the Arab Spring’s main success story to a dictatorship, and cracking down on his opponents.
Credit: Aljazeera.com
