Tunisia's politics: a constitution dated to the anniversary of the republic

How Tunisia's constitution tells its own history

The preamble of the constitution approved in July 2022 is a history of Tunisian constitutions as its authors wanted it read. It claims a lineage running "from the Constitution of Carthage to the Peace Covenant, the Declaration of the Rights of the Ruler and the Ruled, and the Tunisian State Law of 1861", and singles out as among the most important a text of the early seventeenth century called Al-Mizan, the Balance, known to the population as the Red Reins "because the [actual] book was red". Quite a few of these texts, the drafters concede, "were derailed when the texts turned into a means of conferring a false formal legitimacy on the rulers."

The Peace Covenant is the Fundamental Pact, or 'Ahd al-Aman, enacted by Muhammad II Bey on 10 September 1857 on the model of the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms. In 1861 Muhammad III as-Sadiq promulgated a constitution that made the beylik a constitutional monarchy with a legislative assembly. Britannica calls it short-lived, and by 1869 the state had declared itself bankrupt. It still gave Tunisian nationalism its name. The party founded in 1920 called itself the Destour, the word for constitution, after the text of 1861, and the Neo-Destour that Habib Bourguiba founded in 1934 carried the word to independence.

The preamble also fixes the revolution's dates. It counts the revolution from 17 December 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor, set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid, and that day is Revolution and Youth Day in the public calendar; Ben Ali left the country 28 days later. It calls 25 July 2021 the day the revolution's course was corrected, "the date of the anniversary of the proclamation of the republic", and 25 July is a public holiday as Republic Day. The date had entered politics once more in between. On 25 July 2013 the opposition politician Mohamed Brahmi was assassinated, and the crisis that followed produced the national dialogue under which the constitution of 2014 was finished.

How the Destour parties held the Tunisian state

Independence came on 20 March 1956, with the bey, Muhammad VIII al-Amin, as king and Bourguiba as prime minister. On 25 July 1957 Bourguiba deposed the Husainid dynasty, which had held the beylical office since 1705, and declared a republic with himself as president.

The Code of Personal Status came first. Promulgated by beylical decree on 13 August 1956, it outlawed polygamy and repudiation, set minimum ages for marriage and let either spouse seek a divorce in a secular court, and the Sharia courts were abolished the same year. Women gained the vote on 14 March 1957 and first used it in municipal elections in May 1959. The day the code was granted, 13 August, is kept as Women's Day.

From 1956 to 2011, in Wikipedia's phrase, the government and the ruling party "were effectively one". The Neo-Destour became the Destourian Socialist Party in 1964 and the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) in 1988, and each name kept the constitution in it. In 1975 the Chamber of Deputies unanimously made Bourguiba president for life. The National Front of the ruling party and the trade union movement took all 136 seats in November 1981, and in 1989 the RCD won all 141.

On 7 November 1987 doctors declared the 84-year-old Bourguiba unfit to rule, and his prime minister, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, took over under Article 57 of the constitution. Ben Ali signed a National Pact with the legal opposition and the Islamists in 1989, then banned Islamist parties and jailed as many as 8,000 activists. He took 99% of the vote in 1989 and was re-elected in 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009, the last time with 89%. A second chamber, the Chamber of Advisors, was added in 2005, with 41 of its members appointed by the head of state. Bourguibism was resolutely nonmilitarist, on the argument that a large military establishment would consume scarce investment and perhaps draw the army into politics; in 2008 the army had 27,000 personnel.

In 2011 a Tunis court ordered the RCD dissolved and its assets liquidated. The Free Destourian Party, which emerged from it, carried the name on, and its leader, Abir Moussi, was detained in October 2023.

Who brokered the settlement after Ben Ali fell

An elected constituent assembly was a central demand of the protesters, and the General Labour Union (UGTT) was among those calling for one. The vote of 23 October 2011, declared free and fair by observers, gave Ennahda, an Islamist party banned under Ben Ali, 89 of the 217 seats, and it governed with two secular partners in a coalition called the Troika.

Two killings nearly stopped the drafting. The leftist opposition leader Chokri Belaid was assassinated on 6 February 2013, and Mohamed Brahmi, founder of the Mouvement du Peuple, on 25 July. A number of opposition parties withdrew from the assembly, the UGTT called a two-day general strike and thousands of protesters gathered at the Bardo Palace, where the assembly sat. On 6 August its president halted all proceedings.

The way out came from four organisations outside parliament: the UGTT, the employers' confederation UTICA, the Tunisian Human Rights League and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers. The union and the employers had signed a "Social Contract" on 14 January 2013. At the national dialogue convened on 25 October 2013, 21 of the 24 parties invited signed a roadmap for interim leadership, an electoral timetable, an impartial electoral commission and a finished constitution. The constitution was promulgated in January 2014, and at the legislative elections of 26 October 2014 the secularist Nidaa Tounes won 85 of the 217 seats.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the 2015 Peace Prize to the Quartet as a body, and to none of the four organisations as such, "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011". Jasmine Revolution was the Western name. In Tunisia the usual one is the Dignity Revolution.

BTI's 2026 country report describes what the consensus cost. Power-sharing between Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes offered a way out of recurrent crises and also blocked major structural reforms, and the system and the parties that ran it were both blamed for the stalemate. In October and November 2019 Tunisia completed its first peaceful transfer of power between elected governments, by Britannica's account. The parliament chosen that year, with Ennahda on 52 seats and Heart of Tunisia on 38, is the one suspended in 2021.

How the presidency took the assembly's place

Kais Saied, a professor of constitutional law attached to no party, won the presidency in October 2019 with 72.5% of the second-round vote. On 25 July 2021, after protests across the country over the economy and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, he dismissed the prime minister, suspended parliament for thirty days and lifted its members' immunity, and the army closed the parliament building. He invoked Article 80 of the 2014 constitution, which, as Wikipedia's history of Tunisia summarises it, required him to consult the prime minister and the speaker and did not allow parliament to be suspended. His supporters celebrated. Others called it a power grab.

Rule by decree followed. Presidential Decree 2021-117 of 22 September 2021 set out the exceptional measures, and Article 139 of the later constitution kept it in force until a new assembly sat. Najla Bouden Romdhane, named on 29 September 2021, was the first woman to head a Tunisian government; she was dismissed in August 2023, and her successor was replaced a year later. The Supreme Judicial Council was dissolved in February 2022, and parliament in March.

The drafting was short. An advisory committee formed in May 2022 handed the president a draft in June, and its chairman, Sadok Belaid, then said the published text did not reflect that draft and contained chapters that could pave the way for "a disgraceful dictatorial regime". Political parties had been kept off the committee. Salsabi Klib, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Tunis, told France24 it was a "presidentialist constitution, in which the balance leans towards the president", and BTI describes the constitution as "single-handedly drafted" by the president.

The referendum of 25 July 2022 drew a turnout of 30%, and the overwhelming majority of those voting approved the text. In an Arab Barometer survey taken in October and November 2021, cited by the House of Commons Library, 81% agreed that "this country needs a leader who can bend the rules to get things done". The same programme, BTI reports, put trust in parliament at 9% in 2021. In 2023 about 70% of those it asked associated democracies with weak economic performance, and 79% still called democracy the least bad system.

What the present constitution gives the president

Chapter Four gives the executive function to the president, "with the assistance of a government headed by a head of government" (Article 87). The president sets the general policy of the state (Article 100), appoints the head of government and, on that person's proposal, the ministers (Article 101), and may end their duties "of his/her own accord" (Article 102). The government is accountable to the president (Article 112), whose bills take priority in the assembly; only the president may table finance bills and bills approving treaties (Article 68).

Removal runs one way. A censure motion needs the signatures of half the members of each chamber, and two thirds of both combined to pass, and after a second censure in one term the president may dissolve either chamber or both (Articles 115 and 116). The president has immunity for the whole term (Article 110), and BTI notes that the new text eliminated impeachment by the legislature.

The limits that remain fall on the person. A candidate must be at least forty, hold no other nationality and be born to a Tunisian father and mother, with Tunisian paternal and maternal grandfathers (Article 89). No one may hold more than two complete five-year terms, and Article 136 bars any revision that would add to their number or length. While exceptional measures are in force in a state of imminent danger, neither chamber may be dissolved (Article 96).

Religion is written into the office. Article 88 says the president's religion is Islam, and Article 5 has the state alone work "in a democratic order, to achieve the objectives of true Islam". In BTI's reading Sharia is not the main source of law, though the 2014 constitution stated the separation of state and religion more explicitly. The president appoints the grand mufti.

How Tunisia fills its chambers and councils

The Assembly of the People's Representatives has 161 seats, ten of them for Tunisians abroad, and Britannica's fact box, updated in October 2026, listed seven of those ten as vacant. Deputies are elected for five years, must be 23 to stand, may have their mandate revoked under the electoral law, and may not join another bloc after leaving their own (Articles 58 to 62).

Its first election, in December 2022, ran under an electoral law the president had rewritten by decree. Only individual candidates could stand, and BTI records that parties across the spectrum were barred. The gender quotas used at legislative elections from 2011 to 2019 were dropped, the European Parliament declined to observe, and turnout was 11.3%. Many of those elected were affiliated with the 25th July Movement, which BTI calls the president's political platform. Parliament had stayed closed by decree from July 2021 to March 2023.

The National Council of Regions and Districts is chosen in stages. Voters elect local councils. Under Article 81 each regional council sends three of its members to the National Council, and the regional councillors of each district send one. The local councils elected in 2018, in what BTI calls the first democratic local elections, were dissolved in March 2023, and their replacements were elected in December 2023 with the opposition boycotting and a turnout of 11.7%. In March 2024 they chose the regional and district councils, which elected the 77 members of the National Council, and it first sat in April 2024.

Administration runs from Tunis. The 24 governorates divide into 264 delegations and then into municipalities and sectors, the governors are appointed by the central government, and a reform of 2023 added five districts to coordinate the governors. Under the quotas women averaged 30% of parliamentarians across four election cycles and made up 42% of the municipal councils after 2018, according to the Wilson Center; BTI finds few women in the present parliament.

How courts and elections came under the presidency

The judiciary was reorganised next. In February 2022 the president dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council and formed a new body over which he had wider power, and under Executive Order 2022-35 he removed 57 judges and prosecutors that year. The Administrative Court ordered them reinstated, and BTI records that the Ministry of Justice ignored the ruling. Under the 2022 text judges are appointed by presidential order on the nomination of the high council for their branch (Article 120).

The electoral authority went the same way. Article 134 gives the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) nine members on single six-year terms, and BTI notes that the president has appointed them directly since 2022. For the presidential election of 6 October 2024 the ISIE accepted three candidacies and rejected 14. In late August 2024 the Administrative Court reinstated three of the rejected candidates; the ISIE refused to comply, saying the ruling had reached it too late. One of the two challengers left, Ayachi Zammel, was arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison before the vote. Five parties called for a boycott, and the incumbent won 90.7% on a turnout of 28.8%.

Prosecutions reached across the old party system, from Islamists to far-right secularists in BTI's description. Ennahda's headquarters were closed in April 2023 and its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, a former speaker of parliament, was arrested; the former president Moncef Marzouki was sentenced in absentia in 2024. Executive Decree 2022-54 was used against journalists, lawyers and bloggers for comments criticising the president or the government.

In 2025, Freedom House reports, a court sentenced 37 people in one mass trial in April, with sentences of up to 45 years largely upheld in November, and 21 more received 12 to 35 years in July. Freedom in the World 2026 scored Tunisia 11 of 40 for political rights and 31 of 60 for civil liberties, 42 of 100 in all against 44 a year earlier. A formal state of emergency has been in place since an attack on a police bus in 2015, according to the UK Foreign Office's advice in October 2026.

Which partners Tunisia has kept and lost abroad

Bourguiba's conviction, Britannica records, was that Tunisia's future lay with the West, France and the United States above all, though trade with the Soviet bloc stayed open, and he argued for Arab recognition of Israel. The early crises were with France: the bombing of the village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef in 1958, the battle at Bizerte in July 1961 that left some 630 Tunisians and 24 French dead before France ceded the base in 1963, and the suspension of French aid after Tunisia nationalised foreign farmland on 12 May 1964. Tunis held the Arab League's headquarters from 1979 to 1991 and the Palestine Liberation Organization's from 1982, and an Israeli air raid on the PLO headquarters on 1 October 1985 killed at least 60 people. The 2022 preamble refuses to let the state "enter into alliances abroad" and backs a Palestinian state "with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital".

The economy runs through Europe. Tunisia signed an Association Agreement with the European Union in July 1995, in force from 1998, and in 2023 the EU supplied 43.8% of its imported goods and took 72% of its exports (BTI). The United States treats Tunisia as a major non-NATO ally. After 2021 the terms changed. A memorandum of understanding with the EU in 2023 tied part of its support to curbing migration. In October 2023 the president returned €60 million to the European Commission as "resembling charity", and the Commission raised the sum to €150 million, paid as budget support in 2024.

The IMF loan was refused at home. A staff-level agreement for $1.9 billion was reached in 2022, conditional on cuts to the public wage bill and to energy and food subsidies, and in April 2023 the president rejected it, in part, BTI says, under pressure from the UGTT. Remarks by the president about sub-Saharan migrants in February and March 2023, which BTI calls racist, were followed by mob attacks on Black people. The African Union condemned them, Guinea and Ivory Coast flew their nationals home, and the World Bank paused cooperation for months and resumed it in 2024. UNHCR counted at least 28 migrants dead after expulsions to desert areas. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have backed the authorities politically and financially since July 2021.