The Tunisian crisis seems to have come to a head. President Kais Saied dropped out of sight for days in late March, fueling all sorts of speculation and underscoring the fact that the country has had no Constitutional Court since 2011—despite two successive constitutions calling for its establishment. The stalemate is highly political (the independence of justice) and revealing of Tunisia’s paralysis. Opponents, intellectuals and journalists are in jail. Self-censorship has returned to the country where the Arab Spring began. Inflation has hit 10% since January, wiping out the working and middle classes. Young people, Tunisians or coming from sub-Saharan Africa, risk their lives crossing the sea while the well-to-do jet off to enjoy better lives elsewhere. The state is on the brink of bankruptcy, crushed by haphazard management and a debt of over $40 billion (93% of GDP). For months, the government has been negotiating a two-billion-dollar loan from the IMF, a possible windfall obviously tied to implementing major reforms, which nobody in Tunis seems willing to undertake. All this, while, roughly speaking, there is no way, budgetary wise, to make it until end of the year. Some certainly imagine that perhaps Russia, China, Algeria or a “knight in shining armor” will come to the rescue.
