In 2011, previously banned political parties were legalized and allowed to compete, including numerous leftist parties. However, after years of disagreements, the leftist coalition of parties, the Popular Front, finally dissolved when Hamma Hammami, longtime leader of the Workers’ Party (before 2012 the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party) was chosen to be the coalition’s official candidate in the 2019 and the Unified Democratic Patriots’ Party (WATAD), led by Mongi Rahoui, split off. But since President Kais Saied’s July 25th 2021 measures suspending parliament and assuming full governing powers, fragmentation has continued even further within leftist organizations.
Like the many diverse political groups who supported Saied’s measures, some leftists also saw July 25 as ending ten years of political corruption and a false democracy that neglected the social priorities of unemployment and economic deterioration—a “black decade” according to some like Rahoui. However, it wasn’t long before concerns began to grow across the political spectrum about the threat of concentrated power.
“It is true that the majority of the left supported the 25th of July measures, but soon after, most of them gave up on it gradually, as it became clearer that we are heading towards a one-man regime,” Wael Naouar, a longtime political activist on the left and the founder of Kawem (Resist for a Socialist Alternative), told Meshkal in September, before his recent arrest on October 8 following a protest against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Naouar’s opposition to the July 25 process is in contrast to that of Rahoui of WATAD, who has on several occasions offered support to President Kais Saied. The latest was this August, when Rahoui reiterated his support for the “July 25th process.” Rahoui, who is also a former MP and a high-profile presidential candidate who ran against Saied in 2019, has previously credited Saied with eliminating the Islamist Ennahdha party from the political scene as well as rejecting an International Monetary Fund loan and the loan’s austerity conditions.
Workers’ Party an Early Critic of Saied
Historically, the Workers Party was one of the oldest and most high-profile parties within the “leftist” camp. Their members—activists and politicians like Mouhamed el-Kileni, Zouhaier Hamdi and Hamma Hammami—have been imprisoned numerous times during the dictatorships of Bourguiba and Ben Ali and suffered defamation from political opponents after the revolution.
Hammami, who has been head of that party since 1986, is still the secretary general, despite many attempts to reform the party in favor of a younger leadership. Almost immediately after Saied suspended parliament in 2021, Hammami called the move a coup and denounced it, with the party one of the few to release a statement on July 26, 2021 criticizing what they called president Saied’s “coup.” More recently, before the October 6, 2024 presidential reelection of Saied—in which authorities arrested and/or barred numerous candidates from running—Hammami dismissed the election as illegitimate.
“On July 25th [2021], he [Saied] used article 80 of the constitution in the way he personally wanted to. He suspended parliament then dissolved it. He dissolved the government. He monopolized all powers. And from there he started a new path in Tunisia,” Hammami said in a September 3 interview with Sawt Achaab, the Workers’ Party media outlet.
“He then consecutively released orders that aborted most of the state’s institutions which were the fruit of the revolution, despite the deficiencies of the post-revolution regime, which were caused by the malpractices of the ruling majority—to which our party was opposed,” he continued.
Outside of the spotlight, many rank and file leftists who show up for protests and strikes, who frequent activist cafés and social circles, have abandoned hope that the presidential view and project launched on July 25 will bring concrete change at the social and economic level.
“The intentions of leftists who endorse the July 25th coup vary,” remarked Jileni Barhoumi, a secondary school teacher and a member of Workers Party. “They go from opportunism, to political naiveté, to, in the best cases, a wrong interpretation of what those measures would produce… For us, we still believe that measures that came by breaking the law cannot produce a process that respects it.”
Barhoumi believes that other leftists who first endorsed president Saied’s July 25th measures are having second thoughts now, as they witness on a daily bases the features of an emerging dictatorship, with censorship, imprisoning and elimination of all critical voices among political opponents, judges and journalists.
Other Leftists Critique Workers’ Party
But while the Workers’ Party has been an early and frequent critic of President Kais Saied and the July 25th measures, other parties on the left have lashed out at what they see as the Workers’ Party, and particularly Hammami’s, conciliatory approach to the Islamist Ennahdha party.
“They are still stuck with the idea of October the 18th 2005 alliance and couldn’t get pass it,” Mouhamed Amine Boualleg, a student, writer, and activist who defines himself as a leftist with an Arab nationalist background told Meshkal.
The 18 October Coalition for Rights and Freedoms of 2005 included Hammami, as well as other liberal political dissidents, coming together with Ennahdha leaders against the regime led by Ben Ali.
“Coalitions with Islamists cannot be legitimate after the 10 years of their ruling that led to the presidential measures of July the 25th,” Boualleg continued.
The Arab nationalist wing of the left in particular has traditionally been more critical of Ennahdha, with many blaming Ennahdha for the assassination of one of their leaders, MP Mohamed Brahmi, in 2013.
Boualleg also criticized the Workers’ Party for holding double standards. He points to a 2020 statement by Jileni Hammami, a member of the Workers’ Party central committee. In that statement, Jileni Hammami called the parliament illegal and in need of dissolution—exactly what Kais Saied did one year later. According to Jileni at the time, dissolving the parliament would not be illegal because the parliament led by Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi no longer represented the people.
Now, however, criticizing President’s Saied’s order dissolving parliament has become one of the Workers’ Party’s main political talking points.
The October elections: a huge disagreement
The lead up to the October 6 presidential elections also saw the election itself prompting significant disagreement among leftist groups—as well as within other political groupings as well.
The High Independent Electoral Authority (ISIE) made controversial decisions banning candidates Abellatifel Mekki, Mondher Znaidi and Imed Daimi from running, ignoring the decision of the administrative court of Tunis to reinstate their candidacies.
This had left the competition with only three candidates: President Saied; Zouhaier Maghzaoui, who is the general secretary of Harakat Echaab (which had previously been in the Popular Front coalition), and a third candidate, Ayachi Zammel, who was imprisoned prior to and during the election.
Many voices within the political left attempted to convince Maghzaoui to quit the competition as an act of protest over what many saw as the illegal suspension of candidates and the imprisoning of journalists and activists. But Maghzaoui rejected those calls to drop out in an August 28 press conference, reiterating that, although he saw Saied taking an authoritarian path, he would not withdraw.
Some criticized Maghzaoui for not bowing out on principle. Maghzaoui’s party participated in the parliament Kais Saied suspended on July 25, 2021 before turning against the legislative body following Saied’s suspension of it.
“We respect Maghzaoui’s past as an honest and true freedom fighter in the Ben Ali era. However his full endorsement of the July 25th measures, even though it hasn’t brought anything in terms of economic policies and in regards of the urgent social demands, shows that he is in many ways a part of the current regime,” Naouar told Meshkal, adding that he had urged Maghzaoui to withdraw from the electoral race if he really meant his comments about Saied’s authoritarianism.
In the August press conference, Maghzaoui had come out with his strongest criticism of President Saied to date, alleging that Saied had continuously changed his government members, prime ministers and governors in an attempt to hide his own failures to create economic and political stability. Maghzaoui also pointed to the growing repression of journalists and political opponents as another indication of Saied’s failure.
Still, some on the Arab nationalist left told Meshkal that they considered Maghzaoui’s potential withdrawal as a sign of surrender, and had called on him to stay in the race to fight for his chances in order to take down Saied’s rule by elections.
The final election results, according to ISIE, showed Maghzaoui winning 1.9% percent of the vote, compared to about 90 percent for Saied, while imprisoned Ayachi Zammel took just over 7 percent. The turnout was just under 30 percent, according to official numbers.
Civil society: the last line of defense?
Meshkal asked Jileni Barhoumi what potential solutions he sees to the political fragmentation on the left.
“In this critical moment, forming alliances within progressive forces is a must in order to face the populist campaign that demonizes basically every party that dares to criticize the censorship,” Barhoumi responded.
He noted as an example the civil society coalition founded in the lead up to the October 6 election, “The Tunisian Network For Rights and Freedoms,” which successfully mobilized several protests to the election.
One of their largest turnouts was on September 13, when, by some estimates, several thousand protesters took the streets in downtown Tunis to protest President Saied, the upcoming elections, and to denounce the repression of political prisoners. Protesters at that demonstration also called for social justice for marginalized neighborhoods and the unemployed.
In his campaign statement appearing on Sunday September the 15th, President Kais Saied appeared to respond to the slogans of the demonstrations by contrasting “freedoms” with efforts to “infiltrate the state with the aim of dividing it,” which aligns with previous statements he has made alleging that civil society groups represent foreign interests due to their foreign funding resources. Saied also stated that the opposition’s claims about the government being a dictatorship were baseless, since “those who are weeping over freedoms and democracy are holding demonstrations protected by the police itself, and paradoxically, those who used to antagonize each other have teamed up in these demonstrations to shed lying tears about democracy.”
More demonstrations continued to be held in the run-up to the October 6 elections, as lawyers decided to protest in front of regional courts on September the 18th, calling for the right to fair trials and the full independence of the judiciary, which has been undermined by orders and interventions by the executive authority, and led to a state of lack of security among judges.
On October 8th, Tunisian security forces arrested many activists including Wael Nouar, Jawahar Channa, and Louay Khamessi. These arrests are believed to be following the demonstrations that took place the day before in front of the French embassy for the one year anniversary of the Palestinian armed resistance’s Al-Aqsa flood operation and the subsequent genocidal campaign by Israel.
“The Joint Coordination for Palestine in Tunisia” released a statement on the matter, saying that the arrests are a disgrace to the Tunisian authorities, and will not affect the continuous work of support and raising awareness about the Palestinian cause.
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