Tunisia

‘We swore to defend the constitution,’ shouted the deputy speaker of the Tunisian parliament, to which a young soldier retorted, ‘We swore to defend the fatherland’. This exchange in front of the locked gates of parliament last month sums up the paradox of Tunisia. President Kais Saied’s decision a few hours earlier to dismiss his government and suspend parliament had enraged the Islamist speaker and his deputy, who sought to enter the building now guarded by armed troops. Yet tens of thousands from every social class poured into the streets of Tunisian towns and villages, shouting their support for Saied. That support has remained rock solid over a month later,

For a political actor that ‘believes in the universal value of democracy and the rights of the individual,’ as the European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen put it in her state of the union speech last September, the EU is becoming strikingly inured to threats to democracy in its immediate neighbourhood. Tunisia has been the lone success story of the Arab spring. It has delicately nurtured a parliamentary democracy which has managed to reconcile secular constitutionalism with conservative, Islamist political impulses – until last week, that is. Assisted by the military, the country’s President Kais Saied has suspended Tunisia’s parliament for 30 days, dismissed the prime minister, and has