TUNIS, Tunisia – More than 15 years after Tunisians rose up to overthrow longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, familiar frustrations are echoing across the country from north to south.
A rallying cry from the 2011 revolution has resurfaced: “employment, freedom and national dignity.”
This time, those demands are being driven by water shortages, power outages, soaring prices, and medicine deficits—challenges increasingly impacting Tunisians across all social and economic divides.
Yet, this anger is unfolding within a vastly altered political landscape.
This discontent emerges as Tunisia marks five years since President Kais Saied suspended parliament, dismissed the government, and began ruling by decree—actions he deemed necessary to end years of political paralysis and corruption.
Many Tunisians initially welcomed the intervention, frustrated with a political system that had failed to address the nation’s economic woes following the 2011 revolution.
Five years later, many of those grievances persist, even as the political space for challenging those in power has drastically narrowed.
Enduring Demands, Renewed Fury
The decade following Ben Ali’s ouster introduced competitive elections and expanded space for political parties and civil society, yet it also ushered in frequent government turnovers, political disputes, and little tangible improvement in the lives of many citizens.
Unemployment remained stubbornly high, particularly among youth and in the country’s interior. Public services stayed weak while rising prices continued to strain household incomes. By the end of 2020, unemployment stood at 17.4 percent, according to the World Bank.
Tunisia also grappled with severe security threats, including attacks and political assassinations, which compounded economic pressures and devastated sectors like tourism.
These frustrations helped Saied build support as an outsider, promising to break with the traditional political establishment and dismantle what many Tunisians viewed as a dysfunctional system.
On July 25, 2021, Saied suspended the Assembly of the Representatives of the People, dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, and lifted parliamentary immunity, stating he was acting to address a national crisis.
His opponents characterized the move as a coup.
Saied subsequently dissolved parliament and oversaw the adoption of a new constitution in 2022, which significantly expanded presidential powers.
Since then, opposition figures, journalists, lawyers, and activists have been jailed or prosecuted in cases that rights groups describe as politically motivated. Civil society has faced mounting restrictions, and critics argue that institutional checks on presidential power have been weakened. Human Rights Watch, for example, has described the “conspiracy case” as part of a broader crackdown on dissent.
The “Conspiracy Case” Explained
The case centers on allegations by Tunisian authorities that opposition politicians, lawyers, activists, and other public figures were involved in a conspiracy against state security, seeking to destabilize the country and undermine the government. The defendants included figures from across the political spectrum.
![Tunisians protest against President Kais Saied in Tunis, demanding the restoration of democracy and the release of jailed activists and journalists amid growing anger over deteriorating living conditions and an economic crisis [Jihed Abidellaoui/Reuters]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==)
In April 2025, a Tunisian court sentenced 37 defendants to prison terms ranging from four to 66 years. Human Rights Watch described the case as politically motivated and criticized the trial for failing to provide adequate due-process protections.
On November 27, 2025, a Tunis appeals court upheld convictions against 34 of the 37 defendants, sentencing them to between five and 45 years in prison and acquitting three.
Human Rights Watch and other rights groups continued to criticize the proceedings and described the case as part of a wider crackdown on dissent.
The authorities reject these accusations and maintain that the defendants were prosecuted for serious offenses against state security.
However, the political transformation has yet to produce the economic turnaround Saied promised.
Unfulfilled Promises
Many of Tunisia’s economic problems predate Saied. Years of underinvestment, fiscal pressures, and aging infrastructure have left public utilities and other state services struggling to meet demand.
However, these failures have become increasingly difficult to separate from Saied’s record, as he came to power promising that a stronger state could overcome the weaknesses of the old political system.
This summer, temperatures approached 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of Tunisia, pushing electricity demand to record levels. Kairouan reached 49.8C (121.6F) on Thursday, according to the Tunisian Observatory for Weather and Climate. The Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas introduced rotating power cuts across several regions, and the outages disrupted water-pumping stations in some areas.
Some residents reported going days without running water. Bottled water shortages intensified the pressure, and long queues formed outside shops and water trucks delivering supplies to certain areas.
For Rebh, a 40-year-old cleaner from Tunis, the demands are not about luxuries but about affording and accessing the basics of daily life.
“People are tired,” she told Al Jazeera. “They are choosing to cross the sea and die trying to reach Europe instead. I hope we can stand together and find a solution now. We are not asking for the impossible. This is about water and electricity. We want to live as humans, yet we are feeling dead while we’re still alive.”
For many Tunisians, these shortages are part of a broader squeeze on purchasing power that has made affording basic necessities increasingly difficult.
The extreme heat has also placed immense pressure on an already strained health system, with doctors warning of overwhelmed emergency departments.
The point, however, is not that Saied created Tunisia’s economic problems; he did not.
The question remains whether the more centralized system he built has delivered the more effective government he promised.
A Shrinking Space for Dissent
For journalist Manel Derbali, the shift has been visible not only in the media but across the wider public sphere.
After the 2011 revolution, she said, Tunisians gained a newfound ability to speak openly and access information. Despite the protests and political turmoil of the period, journalists felt they were not alone in challenging those in power.
“After years of censorship and police repression, everything opened up,” Derbali said. “The journalist felt that the street was with them in one way or another.”
She noted that journalists also had channels to raise concerns about their working conditions and make proposals to officials, including through parliament and ministries, while access to decision-makers remained accessible.
“After July 25, all of these spaces became closed,” she said.
Derbali said journalists now struggle to obtain even basic responses from government institutions, with official bodies sometimes leaving requests unanswered for months.
“Unfortunately, history is repeating itself, and we have returned to relying on citizens’ videos to investigate and verify information,” she said.
Her account reflects a broader concern among critics of Saied that the institutions and public spaces that emerged after the revolution have been steadily weakened.
Could Economic Anger Turn Political?
The current protests are not limited to Tunisia’s traditional opposition.
The Nafas movement, which has organized recent demonstrations in Tunis, seeks to bring together political parties and independent figures beyond the country’s established opposition to Saied. Its protests have also attracted citizens who had not previously participated in political demonstrations.
Rabii Qassem, a member of the Nafas collective, said comparisons between the past five years and the decade after the revolution should not be reduced to whether Tunisia was simply better or worse before Saied.
“I’m not saying that Tunisia between 2011 and 2021 was paradise,” he said. “There were very serious crises: unemployment, corruption, economic fragility, political conflicts, and a failure to achieve a large part of the revolution’s goals.”
However, according to Qassem, that period also brought gains, including greater freedom of expression and protest, a stronger civil society, a more diverse media, and elections that allowed for peaceful transfers of power.
“After July 25, the economic and social problems that already existed were not solved,” he said. “They were joined by a decline in political checks and balances, freedoms, and the space for civil society.”
For Qassem, many of the demands raised in 2011 remain unresolved.
“Where is employment? Where is the water? Where are the public services? Where is the dignity?” he asked.
He noted that economic hardship and political repression have increasingly fed into each other, as people struggling with rising prices and deteriorating services have also found fewer avenues to express their frustration.
That does not mean Tunisia is experiencing another 2011.
Many Tunisians remain wary of the political parties and politicians who dominated the decade after Ben Ali, while Saied continues to have supporters who blame that period for years of economic stagnation and political instability.
Nor does every person angry about a water cut, electricity outage, or rising prices necessarily oppose the president.
However, the protests demonstrate how economic and political grievances can increasingly overlap.
Before 2021, Tunisians could blame a democratic political system they viewed as ineffective for failing to improve their lives.
After 2021, Saied dismantled much of that system and promised that a stronger presidency would deliver better governance.
Five years later, many of the same grievances remain.
The difference is that the avenues for challenging them have become narrower.
“Employment, freedom and national dignity” was a central demand of the revolution that ended Ben Ali’s rule.
Fifteen years later, Tunisians are again demanding jobs, basic services, and greater freedoms—but now from a president who came to power promising to address the failures of the system that followed the revolution.