Except now, accompanied by security, greeted by a teeming crowd, he was their president. “I took a selfie like a friend would. Honestly, it was pretty special.
For Chihaoui, this encounter reinforced his belief – shared by many of the president’s supporters – that Saied is one of them. He will vote “yes” on Monday in a contentious referendum on a new constitution that Saied says will lead Tunisia to a more prosperous future.
Many other Tunisians believe the opposite will happen. They say Saied has spent the last year executing a drawn-out power grab and that his draft constitution – released just weeks ago – was crafted through an illegitimate process. They say the referendum will only further cement his one-man rule and unravel the progress made since the 2011 revolution toppled dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and launched the Arab Spring in the Middle East.
With no required minimum turnout and many opponents of Saied boycotting the process to avoid giving it credence, the referendum should largely pass.
The vote comes a year to the day since Saied dismissed parliament and sacked his prime minister, suddenly dividing the country between those who celebrated his decision as necessary to end an ongoing political crisis and those who decried it as a coup that threatened the survival of the only democracy born of the Arab Spring.
The decision – which came amid a deadly wave of coronavirus cases and a political standoff between the president and a divided parliament – was initially widely celebrated in Tunisia and threw out Saied, a man who once seemed like a candidate. unlikely to wield such immense political power, in the spotlight.
His stilted speech and insistence on using formal Arabic rather than the Tunisian dialect earned him the nickname “RoboCop”. Even some of his supporters, including Chihaoui, acknowledge that he lacks the typical charisma and sociability that so often accompany a successful political figure.
Yet he ran for president at a time when Tunisians – tired of a decade of failure to improve the economy and politicians who failed to deliver on their promises – hailed his status as a relative outsider. in the political system and a perception of its reliability. . He won 73% of the vote.
He became immensely popular last summer with those who saw his drastic measures to suspend parliament as necessary to root out corrupt or ineffective officials, including within the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, once a dominant force in government.
But for some of those supporters, the popularity was short-lived. Now the country, overwhelmed by a deepening economic crisis and facing widespread political division, grapples with what many of its former supporters see as the consequences of their earlier misconception.
“He went under everyone’s nose,” said Abderraouf Betbaieb, a retired diplomat who has known Saied for decades and was part of his inner circle before resigning in 2020. “He plunged the country into crisis “.
Lawyer and politician Samia Abbou was never captivated by Saied but was among those who applauded his unconventional intervention last July, hoping it would mark a new beginning for the country’s democracy.
But in September, when Saied announced an extension of the state of emergency and a further extension of his powers, she felt he had strayed too far from the script. Then, in December, he proclaimed that parliament would remain suspended until the end of the July referendum. Finally, in March, he announced that parliament had been dissolved and has since replaced the members of the Independent Electoral Commission with his appointees.
Now, she says, she is certain that the new constitution only lays the groundwork for a “dictatorship”.
“I can’t regret something that had to happen,” she said of her support for her initial decision last July. But the sequel “was made in bad faith. It wasn’t honest. »
“He succeeded in dividing the people in two. … We never experienced this, even under the Ben Ali regime,” she said, referring to the dictator who was overthrown in 2011. “We have become fanatics, either for or against. People no longer smile together, even within the same family.
Even the expert Saied tasked with drafting the new constitution is among those publicly decrying the president and boycotting Monday’s vote, saying it would be an ethical “betrayal” for him to participate.
Sadok Belaid, the former dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tunis who taught Saied as a young man, agreed this spring to head the advisory commission tasked with drafting the new legal document. He had known Saied for decades, he said, and described him as having been “very affable, very kind, very modest”.
For weeks, Belaid recalls, he worked tirelessly on the project. The day after he submitted his full version of the new constitution, he said, he went to the hospital for an operation he had postponed to draft the document.
Later that day, in his hospital bed and still under anesthesia, he said, Saied visited him and handed him a stack of papers that he described as an edited version of Belaid’s work.
It wasn’t until the president left that Belaid, who is over 80, realized he was holding an entirely different version of the constitution – one that Saied appeared to have largely drafted himself . The new version gives Saied more powers and reduces parliament’s influence, among other changes widely condemned by his opponents.
“It’s a real comedy…one that ends badly,” Belaid said. “The reality is that the president has used this prestige he has in the eyes of the population to pass a text that does not respond to the needs or demands of the people but to his own intentions.”
Back at the cafe, Chihaoui, said it was indeed Saied’s reputation as a “cultured” person that drew him to his candidacy.
Yet in a Tunisia rocked by political infighting, “I thought it was a dream”.
“A man of the people becoming president? It didn’t make too much sense,” he said. Now that Saied is in power, he said, he supports any decision the president might make. “Everything he does is for the people.”
Just outside the café, Sami bin Mohamed, 42, a salesman, expressed a much less optimistic view. Smoking a cigarette, he lamented the deteriorating economic situation and said he would boycott Monday’s vote.
“Every president works for his own good,” he said. And in the poorest neighborhoods, he added, “everyone is considering leaving illegally. I don’t think it’s possible to fix stuff here.
Saturday in the city center, a small crowd gathered to protest against the referendum and express their support for the Ennahda party.
“We are here because Mr. Kais Saied is making a coup in Tunisia,” said Fathia Azaiz, 63. “He is changing everything. … The president isolates himself and is not a Democrat.”
Nearby, Kawthar Guettiti, 36, a graphic designer, was walking with her 6-year-old daughter, who was holding a small Tunisian flag. She will vote “yes” on Monday, she said, as she is confident Saied intends to put the country on a stronger path for her daughter’s future.
“He has a legal background. He knows very well what he is doing. He will not be more of a dictator than the others,” she said.