Tunis, Tunisia – The warmth bears down, mixing with the acrid odor of rotting refuse, 54-year-old Issa Jawadi ignores it, busy at work.
Jawadi is surrounded by piles of garbage which have spilled out from a skip during which he forages. That is how he earns a residing – he has been accumulating discarded plastic bottles because the revolution, greater than a decade in the past. Earlier than that, he served 9 and a half years in jail for causes he doesn’t need to go into.
However, regardless of his troublesome circumstances – and Tunisia’s persevering with issues – Jawadi won’t blame more and more authoritarian President Kais Saied.
As an alternative, he helps him.
“I simply be at liberty,” Jawadi tells Al Jazeera. “He received’t ship me again to jail.”
Jawadi says he doesn’t have a lot time for politics, however remains to be positive that Saied is free from the corruption that he believes taints lots of the nation’s politicians.
“He’s clear,” he says, wiping his arms to show the purpose.
Sustaining recognition?
Saied’s recognition must be on the ground.
Since suspending the nation’s parliament and dismissing its prime minister and authorities in July 2021 – strikes his opponents thought-about a “coup” – the president has dominated straight. Throughout this era of non-public rule, the economic system has continued to flatline, shortages in staple items have change into commonplace, and worldwide goodwill – maintained considerably shakily because the 2011 revolution – has disappeared below a welter of high-profile political arrests and accusations of racism towards Black refugees and migrants.
Polls in Tunisia are notoriously unreliable, however most of these carried out nonetheless appeared to point that Saied has retained vital assist.
Based on a June ballot by Emrhod Consulting, 68.7 % of these sampled stated they might vote for Saied within the first spherical of any presidential election. On the streets, it isn’t unusual to listen to approval of the president, regardless of the nation teetering getting ready to potential chapter.
Nevertheless, the depth of that assist stays doubtful. Except for his hardcore supporters, rallies in favour of Saied have sometimes been underwhelming affairs, and the elections for his new, and much-weakened, parliament noticed a record-breakingly low turnout in December.
As an alternative of blaming the president for the power situation of the nation, the broader public is inspired, via numerous outstanding campaigns, in charge: the judiciary, the worldwide neighborhood, NGOs, “profiteers”, the state administration, former politicians and undocumented Black refugees and migrants.
It has been a part of Saied’s bid to color the nation’s issues because the fault of anybody however the authorities, and dovetailed properly together with his populist rhetoric.
In 2019, his marketing campaign slogan was “The individuals need”, a riff on one of many chants of the revolution, was indicative of the previous regulation professor’s makes an attempt to distance himself from what a lot of the general public had come to see as a corrupt and self-serving political elite. Within the current, even his speeches on the value of bread are given utilizing the rhetoric of “for ‘the individuals’”.
Like populist leaders the world over, Saied benefitted from widespread public discontent with the legislature that preceded his energy seize.
As he travelled the nation, speaking to the unemployed and the dispossessed, politicians within the capital concentrated their efforts on pursuing internecine squabbles, publicity stunts and ignoring each the vicious excesses of the safety providers and an economic system whose decline precipitated the revolution that had propelled many to energy.
Particularly, because the one fixed in each post-revolutionary authorities till 2021, many have continued in charge the self-styled Muslim Democrats, Ennahdha, and their chief, Rachid Ghannouchi for every thing from inflation to meals shortages.
“It’s Ennahdha,” 30-year-old Bedis Nazri stated emphatically whereas leaning on a white fence in central Tunis.
Regardless of not being in energy for greater than two years – and with its leaders in jail – Ennahdha has remained an object of suspicion for a lot of in Tunisia.
“They’ve plenty of cash, in order that they’re utilizing that to purchase and retailer the meals, then promote it to the general public at elevated costs,” Bedis stated.
That notion predated Saied’s centralisation of energy – there have been accusations of corruption and worse towards Ennahdha, usually with out proof. The get together has stated the accusations are a legacy of their vilification by different events and by the pre-revolution regime, when it was banned and its leaders in jail or exile.
Twelve years in the past, each Bedis and his 28-year-old cousin Slim travelled from Jendouba, within the nation’s northwest, to Tunis for a life that Slim jokingly described being “completely unemployed”.
Neither has held a everlasting job, regardless of possessing baccalaureate diplomas, and have spent the final decade employed as day labourers or gaining occasional shifts in Tunisia’s sprawling casual economic system.
Now, competing for the scraps from an economic system that seems nearly predestined to fail, each dinar counts and suspicion of foreigners is at a premium.
Consequently, when Saied sought to put the blame for the individuals’s struggling on the door of the irregular Black refugees and migrants who come to Tunis from sub-Saharan Africa to hunt passage to Europe, it discovered a receptive viewers in Slim and Bedis.
“There are too a lot of them right here,” Slim stated. “They’re affecting the job market. They’ll work for, say, 10 to fifteen dinars [$3.24-$4.86] a day, which isn’t any good for us. It received’t permit us to feed ourselves.”
Requested if they might additionally go to Europe themselves, each laughed. “We’d go now,” Bedis stated.
Elevated fears
Within the buying districts of the capital’s historic medina, whose most important streets have remained a draw for vacationers, who’ve returned in numbers to the nation’s coastal resorts, considerations have been starting to seek out air.
Away from the gaze of the general public, a storekeeper, who gave his identify as Mahmoud Tounsi – or Mahmoud “the Tunisian” – voiced his worries in regards to the nation’s path since he voted for the president.
“Two years in the past, we may discuss something with out it being scary. Now, this may very well be an enormous drawback for me,” he stated.
Switching to Arabic, he defined that Saied had fomented a temper throughout the nation that was cautious of distinction and sought shelter in uniformity. Nevertheless, whereas it has appealed to many, it was additionally coming at a price, he stated.
Tounsi gestured round his store, on the antiques, some real, some shop-bought, that hung from his partitions.
“It’s laborious,” he stated. “The vacationers are again, it’s true, however enterprise is worse now than after 2011 and after the terrorist assaults of 2015,” when fighters affiliated to ISIL (ISIS) slaughtered vacationers on the Bardo Museum in Tunis and on the coastal resort of Sousse.
“Half my enterprise is with vacationers, the opposite half with Tunisians who journey right here from [the affluent suburbs of] Carthage and La Marsa. Now, they’re not coming. They don’t need to spend their cash. They’re scared,” he stated, “They’re fearful of the long run. They need to maintain their cash.”
“Saied’s mission depends completely upon enemies,” stated Tunisian essayist Hatem Nafti, who lately printed a e book on the topic, Tunisia: in direction of an authoritarian populism?
“It’s the one means he [Saied] can clarify the absence of progress,” Nafti stated. “His best enemy is actuality. He has all the facility. From July 2021 to March of this yr, [when the new parliament first sat] he dominated alone. Authorities was by decree, however nonetheless, there’s been no progress.”
“What we’re seeing is nice energy with out duty,” Nafti continued, providing a very Tunisian tackle the superhero trope, “Every part is in charge, however him. Firstly, it was the pandemic, then it was the outdated parliament, then it was the governors, then the judiciary, it goes on.”
“Every part is a conspiracy designed to maintain the poor, poor,” and, by extension, the president helpless, “It’s working,” he stated. “but it surely’ll solely work for the quick time period. Ultimately, individuals are going to wish to see one thing.”
Help for Saied runs strongest within the city working-class neighbourhoods, Nafti stated, lengthy the victims of each the state violence of the pre-revolutionary president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and the elected governments that adopted him.
The arbitrary arrests and beatings of greater than a thousand younger individuals by the safety providers in 2021 – below Saied’s rule – has remained an particularly vivid reminiscence.
“[But] individuals take a look at the president, shrug, and say he can’t be any worse,” he stated.
Nevertheless, behind the scenes, political necessity has created a extra ominous actuality, “As a result of he doesn’t have a political get together, he’s needed to ally with the military and the safety providers, who will ultimately take goal at those self same neighbourhoods, as a result of they all the time do,” he stated. “We’re already seeing that, with people from among the inside areas and Hai Ettadhanem [near the capital] arrested for criticising Saied and his regime,” Nafti concluded.
What this may imply for Jawadi is unclear. Since being launched from jail, not one of the governments or the nation’s presidents has completed something to assist him. He simply desires to get via the day.
Requested what the long run holds, he pauses, “I don’t know,” he stated, “I’ll be doing this till I die.”
