On 25 July 2021, Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, froze the activities of parliament, and lifted the immunity of its deputies. Saïed’s takeover is considered controversial and unconstitutional by many, but also raised hopes across the country that this intervention might end Tunisia’s long-lasting political gridlock and pave the way for authorities to finally tackle the serious socioeconomic struggle faced by large segments of society. To follow developments more closely, the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s North Africa Office is launching a series of interviews with Tunisian activists, civil society, and academics about the recent events and how things could evolve in the months to come. For the second entry in the series, Sofian Philip Naceur spoke to researcher Mohamed-Dhia Hammami about why Kaïs Saïed’s intervention is likely to fail in meeting the people’s aspirations, the impact of Tunisian and international financial institutions on Tunisian politics, and why the parliament cannot be considered the core component of the political system.

Sami Zemni explains how, after Ben Ali's escape, the discovery of a conflict-ridden society led to a polarized debate about the definition of the Tunisian people. The discourse on tunisianité served as a hegemonic discourse that was meant to help bridging the gap between opposing views on who or what constitutes the people. However, tunisianité and the call for the restoration of the state's prestige (haybat addawla) also signaled the possibility of political closure; i.e. the rejection and de-legitimization of political subjectivities that do not subscribe to this view of national identity.

We cannot yet know what the outcome will be of the recent course of events known as the Tunisian Revolution. Its beginning on Decem-ber 17, 2010, with Mohamed (whose real name was Tarek) Bouazizi's self-immolation, gave birth to a genuine process of jumps, jerks, pauses, stops, starts, restarts, and waves of highs and lows. The resulting dialectic of conflict and appeasement highlights this as a process of making, unmaking, and remaking that is being driven by an intense ongoing struggle between emergent social forces and established political formations. Some sense of the prospects of this struggle may only become clear when the final results of the vote for the election of a constituent assembly scheduled for Octo-ber 23, 2011, are announced. Sociological analysis cannot wait, however, until this emergent Tunisian history achieves its end before offering an assessment, partial as it may be. We indeed find ourselves in the midst of " events and practices " warranting apprehension as significant expressions in the " constructive work of bold sociological analysis " that first descriptively records their boundary 2 39: 1 (2012)