18 Aug 2021; MEMO: Tunisian President Kais Saied declared on Monday that he rejects dialogue and vowed not to back down in the political crisis gripping his country, Arabi21 has reported.
"The road map is the one drawn by the Tunisian people, and I will not back down," he insisted. "Whoever imagines or makes himself believe that I will back down is deluded. Let them go away with their alternative road map and the dialogue that they think they can hold."
Observers claim that the president's rejection of any dialogue can only complicate the situation. It is also evidence, they say, that the head of state has gone down the path of totalitarianism.
"There is a single actor in the arena, contrary to what Tunisians have been accustomed to over the past ten years," said researcher and political activist Abdel Hamid Jelassi. "Politics has become more popular than football and the market has flourished for actors, analysts, experts and 'gossip lovers' sitting in front of their computers and making fun of everything."
He pointed out that Tunisia today has a president and a closed government building in front of which there are tanks. "A country in an undeclared siege and a closed parliament hasn't happened in Tunisia for centuries. The funny thing is that even the Carthage Palace is also closed."
According to Jelassi, Saied does not listen to anyone and does not say what he wants to say, even though everyone knows that he seeks to turn the "coup against the constitution" into a full-fledged coup by controlling the entire state and perhaps trying to restructure it.
"Political parties and civil society are waiting, maybe for an opportunistic repositioning, and there is a return to their basic characteristics. The nationalists, as usual, have not made any changes since the 1950s: the saviour leader, the army and the conspiracy. They are smart and trying to position themselves behind the president, but Saied is smarter than them. They do not understand that he does not need anyone and he will cut them out completely."
The National Democratic Movement, the left-wing of the authority and the administration, is betting, as usual, on surrounding the president and using him, added the researcher. "It will only fulfil the function of a minesweeper. As for the Republican Party and the Workers' Party, they recovered their founding characteristics in the initial confrontation of every tyrannical deviation."
Ennahda movement, noted Jelassi, does not seem to have understood the lessons of 25 July very well at all. "It is still presenting the same range of politicians, against whom people rose up, and they are still handing half assessments, while some other parties suffer from their [internal] struggles. They realize the danger posed by Saied, but they imagine that they can benefit from excluding Ennahda."
He concluded by saying that the political scene in Tunisia may move a little after it has been confirmed that the president's project is a coup, given the disruption to parliament and the constitution.
