TUNISIAN President Kais Saied designated former finance minister Elyes Fakhfakh to form a new government this week. The announcement was made late in the evening on Monday, perhaps a sign that Saied's task in naming a new premier had not been an easy one after the Tunisian parliament's no-confidence vote in the coalition government formed by Habib Jemli on 10 January. Saied asked the country's political parties and parliamentary blocs to send him proposals of persons capable of forming a government, with an indication of the reasons for their choices. However, his eventual choice of Fakhfakh came as a surprise. Fakhfakh now has 30 days to form a new coalition government. This period is not renewable, and if the proposed government receives a vote of no confidence in parliament, Saied will be compelled to dissolve the parliament before new elections are held. This could plunge the North African country into further political and economic instability. Tunisia's legislative elections last November resulted in a fragmented parliament that could stall the country's nascent democracy. The moderate Islamist Ennahda Party, which came first in the elections, failed to secure a majority in the 217-seat parliament. But Saied accepted Jemli, the party's candidate for prime minister, who after two months of negotiations failed to win a vote of confidence in parliament due to frictions inside the assembly. Fakhfakh, 48, was a candidate in last November's presidential elections in Tunisia, receiving 0.3 per cent of the votes. He was nominated by the Attayar Party to head a new government. As the former finance minister in the 2012 “Troika” government — an alliance between Ennahda and other parties — he signed a first agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) designed to oversee the implementation of unpopular economic reforms. Hailed as the only surviving democracy in the Middle East in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring, Tunisia's journey since then has been turbulent nonetheless. After eight years and several elections, the country's electorate delivered an angry message to its political establishment in last year's elections by electing the independent law professor Saied as president. In a brief speech on Monday evening, Fakhfakh vowed to form a new government that “rises to the historical moment and the patience of the Tunisian people.” “I will strive to form a government that meets the expectations of the Tunisian people in the recent elections, which delivered a unanimous call for radical change in politics and setting the conditions for a just and strong state,” he said. Mohamed Dhia Hammami, a Tunisian political analyst, said that Fakhfakh's government would likely be rejected by the fragmented parliament, leading to new elections that would be unlikely to result in a more coherent legislative assembly. If the new premier gets a vote of confidence and pursues his neoliberal economic policies, however, this could result in reforms that will exacerbate the country's already precarious sociopolitical situation, Hammami wrote on Twitter. The choice of Fakhfakh underscores Saied's economic priorities following a decade of low growth, high public debt, and declining services since the 2011 revolution that introduced democracy to the country. The Tunisian constitution divides power between the country's head of state and government, leading to political struggles between them over recent years.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 23 January, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
