The streets begin to empty as the breaking of the fast approaches on Tuesday, April 18, a few days before the end of the month of Ramadan. In a dead end of El Menzah 6, a residential area on the outskirts of Tunis where stray dogs take advantage of the calm of the afternoon to bask in the sun, three men sitting in a stationary black car are talking. At first glance, there is no indication that these are police officers who have come to carry out the “orders of the governor” – the equivalent of a prefect – and to block access to the small white house opposite which serves as the premises of the Front. of National Salvation (FSN), the main opposition coalition to Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed. “We don’t know how long we’re going to stay there, we’re just following instructions,” one of the officers said. “The police prevented us from accessing the premises without any justification”, confirms to Le Monde the president of the FSN Ahmed Néjib Chebbi. “All freedoms are collapsing and arbitrariness reigns”, he denounces.
The press conference was to be held the day after the arrest of the leader of the Tunisian Islamist-inspired movement Ennahda, Rached Ghannouchi, 81, at his home near Tunis on the evening of April 17. The party headquarters was searched overnight and at least three other leaders of the movement were arrested. According to a statement by the National Guard spokesperson to the official TAP news agency, this new wave of arrests is the consequence of recent statements by Mr. Ghannouchi.
The latter had warned on April 15, during a public meeting, against the sidelining of certain political tendencies, including political Islam, evoking, if necessary, a risk of “civil war”. The Cybercrime Brigade was tasked with investigating the remarks based on Article 72 of the Penal Code, which provides for the death penalty against “the perpetrator of the attack aimed at changing the form of government. , to incite people to arm themselves against each other or to cause disorder, murder or looting on Tunisian territory”. Tuesday, April 18 in the morning, an internal note signed by the Minister of the Interior invoked the state of emergency – still in force in Tunisia since 2015 – to instruct his services to prohibit access to the headquarters of the FSN, as well as than to Ennahda premises throughout the country.
Hyper-presidentialist regime
An additional step has thus been taken in the elimination of opposition forces nearly two years after the “coup de force” of July 2021 thanks to which President Kaïs Saïed, elected head of state in 2019, had imposed an exceptional regime. Since then, he has dismantled the parliamentary regime set up in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution to replace it with a hyper-presidentialist regime concentrating most of the power in his hands.
The offensive against Ennahda, which had played a central role in the post-2011 government coalitions, is the most spectacular illustration of this. In the district of Montplaisir in Tunis, the headquarters of the movement is now surrounded by the police and the street giving access to it is blocked by metal barriers and police vans. After the breaking of the fast, when the city came to life again and shops were raising their curtains, no Ennahda activist or official came to protest against the ban decreed in the morning or the arrest of their leader the day before. As on the evening of July 25, 2021, after Kaïs Saïed’s coup, the party bases – or what remains of them – did not react. “I think the memory of the repression [under Ben Ali] is still too vivid for many of them,” a party member said on condition of anonymity.
A few meters away, life follows its course during this period of Ramadan. A few neighborhood residents meet at a small cafe on the main road. Sitting at one of the tables, Ali looks delighted. With his dyed black hair, glowing complexion, manicure and laughing eyes, it’s hard to imagine he was recently released from the Tunis detention center where he spent several nights “by mistake”. The 40-year-old says he was arrested following a police check because his name appeared in the file of wanted persons. After a few days of checks, he was finally released without further trial. “It’s the land of oppression,” he slips, still smiling at the “absurd” situation he faced. The arrest of Mr. Ghannouchi and the presence of the police stationed further in front of the headquarters of Ennahda do not interest him too much. “In this country, there is nothing to understand,” adds her friend, looking jaded and feigning indifference.
Rampant inflation
Facing them, Taïeb, a 60-year-old accountant, says he voted twice for Ennahda, in 2011 and 2014. After the revolution, he thought that members of the Islamist-inspired party were “afraid of God” and that they could improve the situation of the country. For the third legislative elections organized in 2019, he cast a blank ballot in the ballot box. “You just have to go to the central market to understand what you are going through”, assures the accountant in reference to the galloping inflation which exceeds the 15% mark in the first quarter of 2023 for food products, with increases of up to 34% for certain meats.
At the same time, Samir Dilou, lawyer for Mr. Ghannouchi and other arrested opponents, receives a call from the cybercrime brigade. He is informed that a new hearing of Mr. Ghannouchi is scheduled for 10:30 p.m. and that this time, the presence of the lawyers would be authorized. But at the entrance to the Aouina barracks, where the head of Ennahda is placed in police custody, agents inform him that only one lawyer will finally be admitted. Mr. Dilou says he refused to submit to this arbitrary rule imposed without legal basis. In the absence of terrorism-related charges, investigators are “trying to buy time,” he said.
Since July 25, 2021 and the suspension of parliamentary activities by Kaïs Saïed, Rached Ghannouchi has regularly appeared before the investigating judge for several cases related to suspicions of corruption and money laundering. He is also accused of terrorism in connection with a case of alleged dispatch of Tunisian jihadists to Syria and Iraq. Several former Ennahda ministers and executives are already imprisoned facing similar charges.
