Unemployed Tunisians gave strongman a chance. Where are the jobs?

Eleven years on from a revolution that overthrew a dictatorship and inspired pro-democracy uprisings across the Arab world, young Tunisians concerned with a lack of economic opportunity are finding themselves in a frustratingly familiar position.

Tunisia’s democratically elected president, Kais Saied, waged a successful campaign and navigated his first two years in office by speaking directly to disillusioned young Tunisians. He vowed to clean up corruption, and railed against a broken political system and deadlocked parliament.

When he assumed emergency powers, suspended parliament, and scrapped the country’s constitution six months ago, his actions were seen as extinguishing the last remaining democratic flames of the Arab Spring. Yet young Tunisians celebrated his move as a course-correction.

Today, however, they are finding that the move from multiparty parliamentary politics to populism has provided no new answers to the socioeconomic woes that sparked their revolution in late 2010 and which have deepened with the pandemic.

“We are children of the revolution. We revolted in 2010 because we wanted decent job opportunities and dignified lives. We thought Kais Saied would finally be the one to fulfill this promise,” says Anis Jlassi, age 28, who has not held a full-time job in the decade since he took part in Tunisia’s revolution.

“But the situation is the same,” he says. “The people guilty of corruption are still dominating everything, and we still can’t get a decent job. This is not what we wanted.”

Higher prices, fewer jobs

Since Mr. Saied’s July 25 power grab, the cost of basic goods has risen by 40%. Chicken costs 50% more. Clothes, too.

Over the same period, overall unemployment rose from 17.8% to 18.4%, and the spread of the COVID-19 omicron variant led the government to reimpose evening curfews just last week.

But most importantly, young people still don’t have jobs. The unemployment rate for those younger than 34 is above 40%.

Yet their revolutionary fervor remains.

“We have a saying in Tunisia: The tongue has no bones,” says Riyadh Hami, a 27-year-old unemployed Saied supporter. “All we have seen is talk, without being backed up by anything solid on the ground,” he says, sitting in a cafe in the working-class Tunis neighborhood of Zahrouni. “We won’t wait forever.”

Saied’s true test

Today Mr. Saied rules alone, wielding presidential edicts and a hand-picked government.

At his direction, on Jan. 14, security forces violently cracked down on pro-democracy protesters gathered in downtown Tunis to mark the revolution’s anniversary, resulting in dozens of arrests, injuries, and one death.

But his true test is facing the hopes, expectations, and frustrations of young Tunisians who overwhelmingly voted for him.

Mr. Jlassi and his friends in the hardscrabble Hay Ettadhamen neighborhood in Tunis say they were initially won over by Mr. Saied, who visited multiple times while on the campaign trail and spent hours listening to their concerns.

When Mr. Saied suspended parliament and assumed emergency powers in July, Mr. Jlassi and young people across Tunisia danced in the streets. But the euphoria has dissipated.

Mr. Jlassi and his friend Khaled rely on the occasional job in construction or the odd shift as a KFC deliveryman.

Badri Hmaidi, a 35-year-old father of two who owns a clothing outlet across the street, is unable to move stock or pay the rent.

“More than 100 days have passed and we have seen nothing clear from Kais Saied except for rising prices,” Mr. Hmaidi says.

Running the economy

Tunisians agree on the economy’s structural and institutional challenges.

The financial and monetary system remains largely unreformed from the era of strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Doing business, getting licenses, and simply sending money can be a bureaucratic nightmare – scaring Tunisians and foreigners alike away from starting new businesses or expanding existing ones. There is a disconnect between university graduates and labor market needs.

Tunisia faces debt levels of 90% of gross domestic product; negotiations between the government and International Monetary Fund over a $4 billion bailout loan have been stuck in limbo.

In their time in office, political parties in parliament grappled with the identity of the country, democracy, and a host of deep-seated institutional challenges left behind by decades of dictatorship, rather than stewarding the economy.

The lack of tangible improvement led large swaths of Tunisians to turn against not only political parties, but parliament itself, paving the way for Mr. Saied’s power grab.

“Perhaps we could have paid more attention to the day-to-day economy and prices, but certain blocs were determined to obstruct and stop parliament’s work,” says legislator Faiza Bouhlel, as she last week ended a monthlong hunger strike protesting against Mr. Saied’s power grab.

“In the last parliament we passed 99 pieces of legislation in 1 1/2 years, but we lost the battle for the media narrative,” says Ms. Bouhlel, a member of parliament from the Islamist Ennahda party for the town of Sfax.

Different priorities?

Mr. Saied and his supporters preach patience, saying his government must first “cleanse” the Tunisian state of what the president describes as “corrupt people,” “criminals,” and “administrative incompetents,” before making headway on the economy.

The president is currently taking on the judiciary, some of whose members date to the Ben Ali era yet stand as the last institutional guardrail in the separation of powers.

“Our message to the people is: Be patient,” says Salah Mait, an unemployed IT specialist who leads a pro-Saied group.

“In 2010-11 there was a popular revolution, but Islamists and corrupt businessmen hijacked it. This is a course-correction of the last 10 years. We are saving the revolution, but we need to wipe the slate clean first.”

As part of the new slate, Mr. Saied, a constitutional law professor, is drawing up a new constitution to be put forward in a referendum later this year.

Rather than build the new constitution through an inclusive national dialogue, like the Nobel Prize-winning troika that drafted Tunisia’s 2014 constitution, he is set to draft it himself with citizens invited to provide input via an online survey being billed as a “citizens’ consultation.”

In the central Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, at a cafe across the street from where fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself afire in December 2010 and ignited the Arab Spring, Haikeel Azzeri, age 25, is more than willing to give the Tunisian president time.

As a candidate, Mr. Saied came to Sidi Bouzid multiple times, sat in the cafe where Mr. Azzeri works, and vowed to follow through on their revolutionary dreams of a better life.

“The revolution that we started right here in Sidi Bouzid was stolen by the politicians in Tunis. Kais Saied is giving us our revolution back,” says Mr. Azzeri as he slings an espresso behind the bar.

“Tunisia is a good country with potential, and parliament let it down,” Mr. Azzeri says, warning that “the same political parties and vested interests that spent the last 10 years destroying the country are trying to sabotage Kais Saied’s reforms.”

Yet for many, the nature of Mr. Saied’s reform agenda remains unclear.

Out of 20 young Tunisians interviewed for this story, only one had heard of the online consultations on the constitution; none said a new constitution was their priority.

“What Tunisia needs right now isn’t another constitution; it needs economic reforms and investments,” Sami Amri, a 26-year-old accountant, says as he walks past the memorial statue of Mr. Bouazizi’s fruit cart in Sidi Bouzid. “We should give the president three years to make the radical changes we need.”

As the economy worsened, Mr. Saied’s approval rating dropped from a high of 82% when he suspended parliament last July to 67% in December, surveys show. Despite frustrations, 76% of Tunisians said they would vote for him in the next election.

Clock is ticking

But analysts warn that blaming economic woes on a “corrupt system” and political foes stifling reforms only has so much mileage as the economy down-spirals further.

“Just like in 2011, the people who demonstrated in support of Saied did not do so because they want his political project or they didn’t like the current constitution; they did it for socioeconomic reasons,” says Youssef Cherif, political analyst and director of Columbia Center Tunis.

“The economic situation did not improve for Tunisians after 2011, and it has not improved since July 25 of last year. Kais Saied risks making the same mistake political parties did over the last decade.”

Young Tunisians are quick to remind the president that the clock is ticking and that they are more than willing to once again revive their revolutionary spirit.

“Before there were too many political parties and MPs to hold anyone to account for the country’s direction,” says Mr. Jlassi, the Hay Ettadhamen resident. “With Kais Saied, there is one person taking responsibility for the country, and we can hold that one person responsible.”

His friend Khaled slaps the cafe table.

“If he fails, we will hold another revolution, go out and say in a collective voice: Saied, leave!”