Tunisian President Saied says he will amend the constitution

TUNIS (September 11) (Reuters) – Tunisian President Kais Saied said on Saturday he was preparing to change the country’s constitution, but said he would only do so using existing constitutional means, seven weeks after having taken the powers in movements which his enemies called coup.

The comments represented his clearest statement so far on what he intends to do next, as he swore he would “not back down” on the situation of the North African nation before his speech on 25 July.

Speaking live on television on a central boulevard in Tunis, Saied said he respected the 2014 democratic constitution, but that it was not eternal and could be changed.

“Amendments must be made within the framework of the constitution,” he told Sky News Arabia and Tunisian state television.

One of Saied’s advisers told Reuters on Thursday that the president planned to suspend the constitution and offer an amended version through a referendum, prompting opposition from political parties and the powerful UGTT union.

Anxiety has been growing, both internally and among Western democracies that have backed Tunisia’s public finances, over Saied’s intentions since his July 25 announcement that he was ousting the prime minister and suspending parliament.

The former professor of constitutional law justified these moves by citing emergency measures to the constitution that his critics and many law scholars said did not support his intervention.

Although it extended the measures indefinitely after a month, it has not yet appointed a new government or made any clear statement of its long-term intentions, as Tunisia struggles to face a moving economic crisis.

Saied also said Saturday that he was about to appoint a new government. The ambassadors of the Group of Seven Advanced Economies have urged him this week to do so quickly and to return to “a constitutional order, in which an elected parliament plays an important role.”

INTERVENTION

Saied’s intervention garnered widespread support after years of political paralysis, but it has put Tunisia in crisis a decade after launching autocracy and embracing democracy in the revolution that sparked the Arab Spring.

Political leaders have complained about the constitution since it was agreed in 2014 and called for it to be changed to a more directly presidential or more directly parliamentary system.

Article 144 of the constitution says an amendment to the document can only be submitted to a referendum if it has already been passed by two-thirds of parliament, an institution Saied said last month “a danger to the state.” Read more

The current parliament was elected in 2019, a week after Saied’s election. It does not have the power to dissolve it and call new elections, but some of the parties in the deeply fragmented chamber have indicated that they could do it themselves.

Moderate Islamist Ennahda, the largest party in parliament with a quarter of the seats, has accused Saied of carrying out a coup and on Saturday said deviating from the constitution would mean a withdrawal from democracy. Read more

The UGTT, Tunisia’s main labor union, also said on Saturday it was opposed to the idea of ​​suspending the constitution and called for new parliamentary elections, a route it could now consider Saied.

Report by Tarek Amara and Nayera Abdallah Written by Angus McDowall Written by Paul Simao

Our standards: the principles of trust of Thomson Reuters.