Tunisia

President Kais Saied, elected in 2019, granted himself extraordinary powers in July 2021, claiming they were needed to deal with a crisis of governance. He suspended much of the post-revolutionary Constitution of 2014 and dissolved the Parliament and later promised to organize a constitutional referendum and legislative elections by the end of 2022. Since Kais Saied’s power grab, the authorities have taken a range of repressive measures against opponents, critics, and political figures, including assigning them to fixed residences, travel bans, and prosecutions for public criticism of the president, the security forces, or other officials, sometimes in military courts. Police sometimes used excessive force against demonstrators.