Tunisia is no Longer a Republic: How Kais will gain public trust as a dictator.

On my previous blog post, I mentioned how, president Kais, will start arresting MPs so that he will dissolve parliament, and so dispose with the only legal possibility of a check on his power. With the arrest of Yacine Ayyari, the reformist MP indicative of this strategy, Kais will now have to deal with the public backlash from such a move. In order to do so President Kais will need a distraction that will deal with increasing public unease and a way to gaining public trust. Dictators and despots do this in several ways, but essentially it culminates in linking an opponent with acts of violence or vandalism or more recently acts of terror, in order to harden public resolve behind president Kais’s draconian powers.

This tactic is seen in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombing , which were a catalysts for the hardening of public opinion to give those in power support for greater draconian measures against political opponents and limitless authority over the state. It could as easily be a media blitz or a campaign sharing fake news on all media platforms to confuse, distort and divide public opinion against a single enemy, and moving popular opinion against such a foe, and as Tunisia is always experiencing terror threats, a cell arrested would be framed to be linked to a political person or political party.

The main point of this is to cleave away those who are uncertain about draconian measures, defeat a political opponent, and excuse mass violence that Kais may use such events to impose his will, using the public need for security against chaos and violence to take away fundamental freedoms. The above tactic comes with the added boon of excusing a possible default on Tunisian debt, freeing president Kais from any blame for it.

So the question is what to do? It is simple: forewarn and forearm… The greatest problem with such a tactic is that if it is known and expected it will backfire in the face of the dictator. It is why I write this, to make clear, that in pursuit of power there are no red lines for someone who has no checks on his authority. The use of mass propaganda to dehumanise a portion of the population is effective, but has long term effects on Tunisia’s republic, its cohesion and civility. With no legal check on president Kais we are heading into the unknown. Tunisia is no longer a republic under Kais. We need to return to democracy, as a way to salvage it.