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INTRODUCTION

The Third Republic echoes the new political order established by Tunisian President Kais Saied since the proclamation of the state of emergency on July 25, 2021, which tipped Tunisia from a democracy in crisis to a regime of emergency. Two years after the proclamation of this regime, which gave the President control over political decision-making power, the architecture of the Third Republic, shaped by Kais Saied's conception of political power, society, and individual freedoms, is well established. With a constitution passed in 2022 granting him full powers in the face of weakened and fragmented legislative and judicial "functions," a fragmented and judicially harassed political opposition, a civil society threatened with dissolution, and the governed disillusioned by the failure of the post-revolutionary political class to resolve the socio-economic causes of the 2011 revolution, the "Tunisian democratic transition" now seems like a distant memory.

The establishment of the Third Republic takes place in a context of economic crisis that is taking on worrying proportions, aggravated by a gloomy regional and international environment that increases the Tunisian multidimensional crisis and isolates Tunisia in the concert of the international community. While Tunisians are preparing to vote in local elections on December 24, 2023, the first stage of President Saied's undertaking to "overthrow the pyramid of power", the contours of the overhaul of the system of governance are becoming clearer, to which the first part of this work entitled "The pillars of the Third Saedian Republic" will be devoted. It will analyze the advent of a presidentialist constitutional order that introduces the possibility of a greater influence of religious reference in public affairs. The tendency to amend existing laws and the publication of presidential decrees with the aim of restricting individual and collective freedoms will then be examined.

In the second part, we will focus on the foundations of the Tunisian President's political legitimacy, between partisan political parties that defend his project and a disunited opposition, without a real alternative project, bearing the stigma of the failure of the 2011-2021 transition and suffering repression from the police and judicial apparatus. In the third part, we will understand the contradictions of the Tunisian political economy between the president's sovereignist vision based on "community enterprises", a disorganized fight against speculation and the desire to recover funds embezzled by the former regime, and the liberal policy of the former Bouden government which focused on negotiating a loan (implying an austerity policy) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an institution criticized by Kais Saied. The fourth and final part will understand the doctrine and new directions of Saed's foreign policy.

I. THE PILLARS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC

The Third Republic established a new political and institutional architecture that opposed the democratic order that emerged from the 2011 revolution. It is based on three pillars: the presidential constitution of 2022, a body of laws that restrict freedoms, and an ambition to overthrow the pyramid of power, what President Kais calls "democracy from the bottom up."

A. The new constitution of 2022

On July 25, 2022, the "Yes" vote won in the referendum on the draft new constitution submitted by President Kais Saied, a year after the coup d'état1 in which he dismissed the Head of Government Hichem Mechichi, suspended and then dissolved the Parliament chaired by the leader of the Islamo-conservative Ennahdha party, Rached Ghannouchi, and adopted a series of measures allowing him to govern by decree. The new constitution put an end to what was traditionally called the post-2011 democratization process, during which a project of parliamentary and decentralized democracy evolved painfully. Above all, it established a new political regime characterized by the preponderance of the presidential office to the detriment of a Parliament and vulnerable judicial bodies.

Kais Saied's Third Republic is reminiscent of the 1959 constitution established by Habib Bourguiba, then strong in his role in the country's independence. Unlike the 2014 constitution, which was the result of a broad consensus led by the "National Dialogue Quartet," winners of the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, the 2022 constitution is the culmination of a process decided and led unilaterally by Kais Saied, following a national online consultation whose conduct, participation rate, and results were hotly contested.

1. The presidentialist character of the regime

If there is only one thing to remember about the essence of the new Tunisian constitution, it is the hypertrophied power it grants to the Head of State. Indeed, there is no semblance of a balance between powers, leaving free will to a president who has arrogated to himself full powers while being neither politically nor criminally accountable. Powers now enshrined as "functions." The state of emergency put in place by Saied following his July 2021 coup has been constitutionalized.

The 2022 constitution combines elements that, in the presidential and parliamentary systems, strengthen the prerogatives of the President of the Republic. The latter can declare a state of emergency with immediate effect, without prior review by the Constitutional Court. The latter still does not exist, although criticizing the former Parliament's inability to establish it was among Kais Saied's main arguments in portraying the
pre-2021 parliamentary system as ineffective and undemocratic. In April 2021, the President refused to promulgate an organic law relating to the establishment of the Court, arguing that the deadlines had been exceeded.

Seen as the source of all the ills of post-2011 Tunisia, the legislative branch has been stripped of its prerogatives. Unsurprisingly, the new constitution makes no mention of the parliamentary opposition, unlike the 2014 constitution, which guaranteed it "adequate and effective representation in all organs of the Assembly as well as in its internal and external activities." Moreover, a bill can be submitted to a constitutional or legislative referendum, without going through the now bicameral and fragile Parliament, since the people's representatives can be recalled after one year in office. For this to happen, a tenth of the electorate in a constituency needs to mobilize. A point of contention during the previous legislature, the immunity granted to deputies is now relative and does not apply to "offenses of insult, defamation, and exchange of violence committed inside or outside the Assembly." [The representative] does not benefit from it either if he hinders the regular functioning of the Assembly."

The government, for its part, is exclusively responsible to the President of the Republic, as provided for in Article 112. A parliamentary motion of censure against the executive is theoretically possible, but it must obtain the votes of two-thirds of the members of both chambers, a very difficult task, given
that the National Council of Regions and Districts has still not been established. Parliamentary control, when possible, is thus exercised on the execution of government activities, and not on their substance.

Moreover, throughout the mandate of the former head of government, Najla Bouden, appointed in October 2021 and de facto assuming the role of a sort of Chief Secretary to the Presidency, no real supervision of government work by parliament was initiated. When there is an attempt at control, such as that relating to the initiative of the presidents of six parliamentary groups concerning the worsening deterioration of Tunisians' purchasing power and the
imbalance in state finances, the criticism of the deputies almost never concerns the decisions of the Head of State, but rather the actions of the government, as if the latter were acting autonomously.

Regarding the judiciary, Kais Saied had already set the tone in June 2022, a month before the referendum on the new constitution, by dismissing 57 judges whom he accused of corruption. In February of the same year, he dissolved the High Council of the Judiciary (CSM), replacing it with a provisional council, but which no longer has the exclusive right to decide the fate of the profession. The judges dismissed by presidential decree two years earlier were not included in the
magistrates' movement, published at the end of August 2023, despite the Administrative Court's decision in favor of 49 of them, which ordered a stay of execution of the dismissal decision.

The magistrates' movement also appears to have served as a pretext for the President to
sanction judges opposed to his policies, as is the case of Raoudha Karafi, honorary president of the Association of Tunisian Magistrates (AMT), who was not only transferred a few years before retirement but also demoted. The AMT, for example, strongly opposed the decision to dismiss the 57 judges, calling for a strike, open sit-ins, and not to apply for judicial positions to replace the dismissed magistrates, as well as for regional bodies under the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE). This stranglehold on the judiciary was embodied in the new constitution, which enshrined the appointment of judges by the president on the proposal of the CSM. Observers have seen this as a political manipulation of the judiciary, citing as evidence the opening of a judicial investigation against lawyers Islem Hamza and Dalila Msadek, members of the defense team for detainees in the case of conspiracy against state security. They are accused of attributing unproven facts to a civil servant and of revealing information about an ongoing investigation.

The method of appointing the persons to sit on the Constitutional Court is also problematic. The nine members will be judges, six of whom will have no particular knowledge of constitutional matters (judicial judges and judges who have sat on the Court of Auditors). All will be appointed by presidential decree, according to their seniority, from among the most senior presidents of the Court of Cassation, the Administrative Court, and the Court of Auditors.

According to Slim Laghmani, Doctor of Public Law, the planned composition of the Constitutional Court does not allow for any jurisprudential stability, obeying a mechanical bureaucratic logic and preventing a variety of profiles, contrary to what was provided for in the 2014 constitution. This provided that the Court be "composed of twelve members chosen from among competent persons, with at least twenty years of experience and two-thirds of whom are specialized in law." It should be noted that the fragmented composition of the Parliament elected in 2019 also did not allow for the establishment of a Constitutional Court, despite the one-year deadline imposed by paragraph 5 of Article 148 of the 2014 constitution. Despite several voting sessions in the Assembly of People's Representatives, only one member in four managed to obtain the majority of votes, namely Raoudha Ouersighni elected in March 2018.