Sat 14 January 2023:
Thousands of protesters marched in Tunisia’s capital, against President Kais Saied’s increasingly authoritarian drift, demanding his resignation.
Protesters were also commemorating, the 12th anniversary of the Arab Spring revolution, which erupted across the region.
The central Avenue Habib Bourguiba, a key site for the revolution – was crowded on Saturday with thousands of protesters waving Tunisian flags, amid chants of “people demand the fall of the regime”.
The protest follows last month’s disastrous parliamentary elections, in which only 11% of voters cast ballots. The elections are intended to replace, and reshape a legislature dissolved by Saied, in 2021.
The protests also come, as the country goes through a major economic crisis, with inflation and joblessness on the rise. Tunisians have been hit with soaring food prices, and shortages of fuel and basic food items like sugar, vegetable oil and rice, in recent months.
On January 14, two thousand eleven, then-President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was forced out of power, transforming the country into a budding democracy, that inspired the Arab Spring.
Saied, who was elected in 2019, suspended the elected parliament and began reshaping the political system, but low turnout for the election of a new, mostly powerless legislature in December revealed, little public appetite for his changes.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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