Growing rift among universities over presidential power grab

Tunisia’s higher education system is split over whether to support the country’s President Kais Saied, who now rules by presidential decree without a suspended parliament while the earlier majority support for his summer takeover has dwindled.

When Saied took executive control of Tunisia in July, sacking the country’s former prime minister and freezing parliament, his actions were met with dancing in the streets, attracting widespread student and academic support. But Saied’s revolutionary momentum is slowing as the new academic year begins.

In fact, on 14 November, thousands of people have protested against the Saied ‘coup’, report various news organisations.

One concern is the prospect of declining international aid and support. Donors such as the German and US governments voiced alarm when Saied issued a presidential decree in September that awarded new executive, legislative and judicial powers to his office.

Germany (the largest aid partner) and the United States (the biggest source of military aid) have both been applying pressure on Saied to form a new government and demonstrate that Tunisian democracy would continue.

New administration

This appears to have had an impact, with Saied announcing a new government under the leadership of Najla Bouden, Tunisia’s first woman prime minister, and a political independent, in September 2021.

She is a geologist and until now has been teaching at the National Engineering School of Tunis.

This administration includes a new minister of higher education and scientific research, Moncef Boukthir, a university professor from the Preparatory Institute for Engineering Studies of Tunis (Institut Préparatoire aux Etudes d’Ingénieurs de Tunis).

He replaced another independent, Olfa Benouda, who served under the government of former prime minister Hichem Mechichi and continued in an acting capacity until this month.

Benouda has been under pressure, with the Union of Tunisian University Teachers and Researchers, or IJABA, calling on Saied to dismiss her.

She had been criticised for refusing to delay the start of the new academic year in September 2021 because of low COVID-19 vaccination rates among students.

As of 28 October 2021, just 37.2% of Tunisians were fully vaccinated, according to Reuters. As of 5 November 2021, the number of fully vaccinated Tunisians reached 4,598,476, according to Tunisia Africa Press.

Meanwhile, some academics and civil society organisations who supported Saied’s actions on 25 July 2021 have pushed back against pressure from donors such as Germany and the US for a quick return to parliamentary government.

On 20 October 2021, prominent civil society leaders and academics such as Sadok Belaïd, a jurist from the University of Tunis, and Slim Laghmani, of the Faculté des Sciences Juridiques Politiques et Sociales de Tunis, launched an online petition declaring their “utter and total rejection of any foreign interference and any violation of Tunisia’s sovereignty”, and rejecting what they see as “parachuted legal-political recipes of democracy”.

This is no surprise, given that the key issue for universities is whether the Tunisian government will be able to pay the salaries and disbursements for services to continue normally while Saied’s takeover is delaying crucial talks with the International Monetary Fund on public finances.

On 14 October 2021, Moody’s downgraded Tunisia’s credit rating from B3 to Caa1, defining Tunisia as a serious credit risk and likely to default on loans, allAfrica reported.

Consultations under way

Bouden is trying to calm tensions and has started talks with the powerful general workers’ union UGTT (Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail), which represents predominantly public sector workers, including university staff. On 27 October 2021, UGTT indicated it was prepared to work with Bouden’s government, but stressed its main interest is to ensure that salaries are paid.

Dr Maha Zaoui, a lecturer at Tunisia’s Higher Institute of Sports and Physical Education, or ISSEP, Tunis, said that the new government was reviewing how the country delivers sports higher education, which is part of a series of consultations designed to seek solutions for Tunisia’s social and economic problems.

Zaoui said she hoped these talks would examine fresh ideas on how Tunisia’s universities are funded and managed.

Zaoui said she has been asked by the new Youth, Sports, and Professional Integration Minister Kamel Deguiche “to consult on how we can change university sports education to meet the needs of the employment market”.

While she welcomed that more focused action was now under way, she did accept that the previous government had discussed a sharper focus in the higher education system on the needs of the country’s job market.

She argued that a better financed and modern Tunisian university sector needs to focus more on the private sector, and she is advocating for more public-private partnerships.

Also, she wants to see more interdisciplinary linkages between courses: “The sports sector touches many other sectors, such as media, textile and garment and the technology sectors, for example,” she told University World News.

Concerns about education plans

While some academics are still backing Saied, others are not, and they are becoming increasingly vocal.

One such higher education leader is a political activist and constitutional law professor Jaouhar ben Mbarek at the Université de Manouba in Tunis. He is a member of the Citizens Against the Coup campaign that has been demonstrating against and challenging the legitimacy of Saied’s suspension of parliament and rule by decree.

Ben Mbarek told University World News: “The situation in universities now is not so far from the situation in the country as a whole; it is very divided between those for Saied and those against.”

He explained that “colleagues are very worried by the ambiguity at the moment”. They are concerned that there is no clear way forward and no practical plan for education. “Saied is pre-occupied by his constitutional reform project. It’s completely ideological,” he said.

Ben Mbarek’s movement is calling for Saied to step down and for the country to return to the 2014 constitution that insists on parliamentary legitimacy.

He claims that protests against the presidential regime are receiving less media coverage than the anti-government protests that preceded Saied’s takeover in early 2021. Ben Mbarek claimed that “arrests of anti-Saied protesters don’t count”.

He and his team of organisers, many of whom are students, are preparing to stage more protests. “I’m under surveillance,” he said. “The police have visited my house, they call my son who is a university student, and my father, asking questions about what I am doing. It is a form of intimidation.”

A practical way forward

Ben Mbarek accepts, however, that there were robust protests at Tunisian universities in 2020 and in early 2021.

Students expressed anger at what they saw as university administrations’ ineptitude during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with failures to respect infection control and help students from poorer backgrounds, who were unable to attend classes, notably online.

By contrast, during this academic year, there’s been very little political activity on campus since students returned to lecture halls, he said.

Looking ahead, Ben Mbarek said political and judicial academics will need to “evaluate the project of Kais Saied” in a scholarly way, accepting that there is not enough evidence to yet reach firm long-term conclusions, despite his current political activism.

Ben Mbarek fears that political struggles for power will prevent the development of effective higher education policy. However, he advises lecturers and professors to await the results of Bouden’s consultation on education and the economy to see if the government does propose a practical way forward.