Tunisia’s President Holds Forth on Freedoms After Seizing Power - The New York Times

“‘Why do you think that, at 67, I would start a career as a dictator?’” President Kais Saied said in a meeting with The New York Times, quoting Charles de Gaulle.

I had been summoned there by President Kais Saied, who five days before had fired the prime minister, suspended Parliament and taken control of the country where, 10 years ago, the revolts against authoritarian rule that came to be called the Arab Spring first erupted.

“‘Why do you think that, at 67, I would start a career as a dictator?’” the president said, quoting Charles de Gaulle, the French leader who re-established democracy after the Nazi occupation of France.

He pledged that he would not strip away the hard-won freedoms in Tunisia, the lone democracy to emerge from the Arab uprisings.

“So there is no fear of losing the freedom of speech,” the president, who is 63, promised, “and no fear as to the right of people to protest.”.

There was almost no sense of dread about the fate of Tunisian democracy; I went around feeling its lack like a phantom limb.

You had to wonder whether democracy the way the West sees it was what many of them had wanted in the first place, or just to live better, with dignity and more freedoms.

Tunisia was supposed to be the last great hope for the Arab Spring.

I’d spent several days in the capital when, suddenly, I got the call to go with two other journalists working for The New York Times to see the president.

Nearly every Tunisian I spoke with seemed pleased, if not outright thrilled, with what Mr.

“What,” one young Tunisian asked me, “has democracy done for us?”.

But not in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, these journalists said?

Tunisia was supposed to be different.

Though we had requested an interview with the president earlier in the week, it was only after Twitter and local political circles lit up with news of what was being called our “arrest” that Mr.

Saied’s chief of protocol called me on Friday morning.

He said that it had all been done according to Article 80 of Tunisia’s 2014 Constitution, which confers exceptional powers on the president in cases of “imminent danger” to the country.

Saied overstepped Article 80, but without the constitutional court that Tunisia is supposed to establish but never has, there is no one to adjudicate the dispute.

Saied, who has declared himself attorney general, will “respect all the judicial processes,” he said, but he warned that he would not leave anyone “to loot from the Tunisian people” — a declaration that he intended to bring corrupt politicians to account.

6 Capitol riot with “thieves” in Tunisia’s Parliament who had “tampered” with Tunisian institutions and rights.