TUNIS — Tunisia’s President
Kais Saied on Friday appointed
a loyalist law professor to head a committee charged with writing a constitution
for a “new republic”, through a national dialogue that excludes political
parties.
اضافة اعلان
On July 25 last year, Saied sacked the government
and suspended parliament, side-lining the political parties that have dominated
Tunisian politics since the 2011 revolution that sparked the
Arab Spring uprisings. He has since vowed to scrap the country’s 2014 constitution and
draft a replacement to be put to a referendum in July but has repeatedly
inveighed against political parties despite calls for an inclusive dialogue.
On Friday the official gazette announced that law
professor Sadeq Belaid would head the newly created “National Consultative
Commission for a New Republic”, charged with drawing up a draft constitution.
Saied has also created three other committees to focus on socio-economic
issues, the judiciary, and on national dialogue.
Since his July power grab, many
Tunisians have
supported his moves against a political class seen as corrupt, but opponents
have labelled his moves a coup and he has faced calls from home and abroad for
a dialogue involving all of the country’s major actors.
Seeking a bailout
As well as a political deadlock, Tunisia has been
facing a grinding economic downturn. As a result, Tunisia has no choice but to
seek a bailout from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) as it battles a
surging budget deficit made worse by the war in Ukraine, Marouane Abbassi,
Tunisia’s central bank governor said Friday.
As the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has sent global
commodities prices spiraling, the import-dependent North African country has
adjusted its budget deficit projections from 6.7 percent to 9.7 percent of
Gross Domestic Product, Abassi told a conference in the coastal business hub of
Sfax. To prevent these costs from hitting the poorest households in a country
where the minimum monthly wage is equivalent to just 125 euros ($130), the
Tunisian state subsidises bread and fuel.
But the country
is mired in debt equal to almost 100 percent of GDP after years of feeble
growth, and is no longer able to borrow on global capital markets. A new IMF
deal — the third in a decade — is therefore “indispensable” for
Tunisia, Abassi
said.
The Ukraine war has hiked grain prices in a country
where bread is a vital part of the diet and where historic hikes on the price of
a loaf have sparked riots.
In exchange for a bailout of around $4 billion, the
IMF has called for far-reaching changes including a freeze on the public sector
wage bill, subsidy reforms, and a restructuring of publicly owned companies.
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