Tunisia takes to the streets

In Tunisia, public frustration is being exacerbated by the heatwave, according to French newspapers, which report on power cuts caused by the use of air conditioning, soaring prices, water shortages and empty market stalls. Tunisians are at their wits’ end; they are taking their anger out on their president-dictator, Kais Saied, and have been taking to the streets in their thousands for a week now to protest. By sidelining the prime minister, Parliament and the judiciary, Saied has, since 2021, gradually transformed his government into a dysfunctional dictatorship that imprisons opponents – the prisons are overflowing, including with journalists. So people take to the streets, marching along Avenue Habib Bourguiba and shouting “go away” at Saied: many are young people, partly because youth unemployment is extremely high; others are activists who, five years on from Saied’s coup, have wanted to send a political message; whilst others are families who are simply angry because the autocrat is unable to manage the drought and there is no drinking water.

The heat, poor economic management and the desire for democracy are uniting diverse groups and creating a crowd that appears unafraid of the repression meted out by the state in recent years. Some are even reviving the slogans of 2011, the year of the ‘Arab Spring’ and of hope. Meanwhile, arriving sub-Saharan migrants have to rent space in the shade beneath the olive trees from local criminals in order to survive the heat, and some are using them as scapegoats for the general discontent, calling for their deportation. In an attempt to reassure at least a section of the population, the elderly Saied is promising and implementing voluntary repatriation schemes, as well as pushbacks to the scorching desert regions, thereby increasing the numbers and further upsetting the balance of the migration routes.