Sarah Yerkes on Tunisia's Democracy in Crisis
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2021
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the past decade, Tunisia's democracy has stood out as one of the few remaining bright spots of the Arab Spring. But earlier this week, it entered its own crisis as President Kais Saied declared a state of emergency, suspended parliament and stated his intent to move forward with widespread prosecutions as part of a long-promised anti-corruption effort. Some argue that Saied's strong-arm tactics are exactly what's needed to break the stagnation that's been plaguing Tunisia's economic and political systems, but others fear that it may be the beginning of the end for Tunisian democracy as we know it. To discuss these developments, Scott R. Anderson sat down with Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Tunisia. They discussed the context for Saied's actions, how other actors in Tunisia and the region have reacted, and what the international community can and should do about it.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | The body that determines whether any of this is constitutional would be the constitutional |
| 0:38.0 | court who decides whether or not actions that are taken are constitutional. |
| 0:42.3 | That body doesn't exist in Tunisia. |
| 0:44.4 | There's been over the years since the constitution was written in 2014, all sorts of political |
| 0:49.0 | infighting that's prevented the constitutional court from being formed, prevented, Parliament |
| 0:53.7 | from agreeing on the nominees that they want to put forward for the court. |
| 0:57.5 | And then in the end, just a few months ago, Parliament did finally come to agreement |
| 1:01.4 | on their nominees and President Sides said, times up, it's too late, I'm not going to |
| 1:05.1 | sign off on this court. |
| 1:06.8 | So there is no constitutional court. |
| 1:08.6 | And this is where things get a little bit tricky. |
| 1:11.8 | These emergency decreases put in place are supposed to last for 30 days, at which point the |
| 1:16.4 | constitutional court can determine whether or not the situation has changed such that |
| 1:20.9 | the emergency measures should be lifted. |
| 1:23.2 | If there's no constitutional court, it's not clear that there's any power that will be |
| 1:27.3 | able to prevent him from extending these measures. |
| 1:30.4 | I'm Scott Ar Anderson, and this is the Lawfare Podcast for July 30th, 2021. |
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