(CROSSTALK)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: In 2011, in the first and only successful Arab Spring revolution, Tunisians overthrew their dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. That's when I first met journalist Amna (ph). The 47-year-old thinks back to those heady days when I reach her on the phone this week in Tunis.
AMNA: It was like a dream. We had a lot of hope. We thought that we would have different lives, that we would have democracy, like a good movie.
BEARDSLEY: Today, she compares Tunisia to another movie - Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator." In the last few years, Kais Saied has jailed political opponents, activists, and journalists, which is why she's afraid to use her last name. So how did it come to this? Michael Ayari is a Tunisia specialist with the International Crisis Group.
MICHAEL AYARI: The economy shrank. There were no social progresses. There was a feeling of state collapsing.
BEARDSLEY: Freedom bred democracy was the slogan of the revolution, says Monica Marks, professor of Middle East politics at New York University.
MONICA MARKS: Tunisians saw those three things as going together. They thought that democracy would lead to more dignity, not just politically, but economically.
BEARDSLEY: The economy did not improve, but more than 200 political parties sprouted in the new climate of freedom. There was also frustration in this secular Arab nation that the Islamist Party remained so dominant. That's when political newcomer Kais Saied emerged. The constitutional law professor who never got his PhD was said to have a chip on his shoulder, but Marks says he knew how to seduce the masses.
MARKS: He drove a crappy car all over Tunisia during his 2019 election campaign, just hanging out with, like, a lot of poor people, especially poor young people.
BEARDSLEY: Saied was elected president with 73% of the vote. Then came COVID and political deadlocks says International Crisis Group's Ayari.
AYARI: The Parliament became a kind of circus. Everybody in Tunisia said, look, the Parliament is not here for our interest. These people are fighting each other. And they said, look, it confirms that political parties are evil.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: So when Saied shuttered the Parliament in July 2021, Tunisians celebrated in the streets, but soon he began to roll back Tunisia's decade of democratic progress, rewriting the Constitution, restricting freedom of expression, and ruling by decree. I meet writer Hatem Nafti, who's critical of Saied. That's why he's not returning to Tunisia. He says Saied has combined left and right-wing populism.
HATEM NAFTI: (Through interpreter) He claims the revolution was stolen by Westernized elites, and he's trying to give it back to the people. At the same time, he is racist and ultraconservative when it comes to social mores.
BEARDSLEY: Nafti says Saied remains popular with a segment of the population by embracing conspiracy theories.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KAIS SAIED: (Non-English language spoken).
BEARDSLEY: Here, Saied claims there's a plot by certain foreign nations to send African migrants to Tunisia to change his country's Arab Muslim culture. Still, many Tunisians believe Saied is successfully tackling corruption. And despite the crackdown on freedoms, there have been sporadic protests leading up to Sunday's poll. Saied has all but assured his victory by disqualifying, barring, and jailing dozens of opponents. There are just two candidates now running against him, and one is in prison.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
