{"id":5700,"date":"2021-07-30T15:48:46","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T15:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5700"},"modified":"2021-07-30T15:48:46","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T15:48:46","slug":"the-political-crisis-in-tunisia-explained-by-an-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5700","title":{"rendered":"The political crisis in Tunisia, explained by an expert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Over the weekend, President Kais Saied fired the country\u2019s prime minister and suspended Parliamentin what his political opponents have called a coup<\/a>.But he says the move was justified after thousands of Tunisians took to the streets in recent days to protest the government\u2019s handling of the pandemic<\/a>, which has deepened the country\u2019s economic woes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporters of the president cheered<\/a> his ousting of Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and other government ministers, but those celebrations turned to clashes when those who opposed Saied\u2019s moves<\/a> also took to the streets to protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the big question marks is: Is this a coup?\u201d said Sarah Yerkes<\/a>, a former State Department and Pentagon official and now a senior fellow in Carnegie\u2019s Middle East Program who focuses on Tunisia. That\u2019s a question a lot of people are asking right now, and it doesn\u2019t actually have a straightforward answer, in part because democracy in Tunisia is still very new.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The president has, I would say, extralegally, or outside of normal legal channels, fired the prime minister. He is allowed to do that, although he has to consult with Parliament \u2014 but he also suspended Parliament. And so that is certainly not something he\u2019s allowed to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has fired other ministers, too. So he declared himself kind of the chief executive. He normally functions as the head of state, and then the prime minister is the head of government. The president, in normal times, just has control over foreign affairs, defense, and national security. The prime minister oversees everything else. But now the president is overseeing everything.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When the president made the declaration, he said he was following Tunisia\u2019s Constitution. There is this article, Article 80, that allows the president to take on emergency powers. But I\u2019ve been following various Tunisian legal experts on social media and through other conversations, and it seems that Article 80 does not really apply to how the president carried things out.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22594759\/tunisia-coup-president-arab-spring<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Over the weekend, President Kais Saied fired the country\u2019s prime minister and suspended Parliament in what his political opponents have called a coup. But he says the move was justified after thousands of Tunisians took to the streets in recent days to protest the government\u2019s handling of the pandemic, which has deepened the country\u2019s economic woes.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the president cheered his ousting of Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and other government ministers, but those celebrations turned to clashes when those who opposed Saied\u2019s moves also took to the streets to protest.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the big question marks is: Is this a coup?\u201d said Sarah Yerkes, a former State Department and Pentagon official and now a senior fellow in Carnegie\u2019s Middle East Program who focuses on Tunisia. That\u2019s a question a lot of people are asking right now, and it doesn\u2019t actually have a straightforward answer, in part because democracy in Tunisia is still very new.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The president has, I would say, extralegally, or outside of normal legal channels, fired the prime minister. He is allowed to do that, although he has to consult with Parliament \u2014 but he also suspended Parliament. And so that is certainly not something he\u2019s allowed to do.<\/p>\n

He has fired other ministers, too. So he declared himself kind of the chief executive. He normally functions as the head of state, and then the prime minister is the head of government. The president, in normal times, just has control over foreign affairs, defense, and national security. The prime minister oversees everything else. But now the president is overseeing everything.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“When the president made the declaration, he said he was following Tunisia\u2019s Constitution. There is this article, Article 80, that allows the president to take on emergency powers. But I\u2019ve been following various Tunisian legal experts on social media and through other conversations, and it seems that Article 80 does not really apply to how the president carried things out.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1104,1123,431,314,1335],"class_list":["post-5700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-authoritarianism","tag-coup","tag-democracy","tag-international-relations","tag-tunisia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5701,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5700\/revisions\/5701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}