Tunisia’s president has issued a decree establishing a new provisional Supreme Judiciary Council, effectively replacing the body he abolished and granting himself additional powers to control the country’s top judicial organization. The decree, published on the official gazette on Sunday, says the president controls the selection, appointment, promotion, and transfer of judges and can act in certain circumstances as a disciplinary body in charge of removals. Contrary to international law, none of the judges appointed in the new council will be elected.
The new decree also forbids judges from going on strike, a form of dissent used to protest President Kais Saied’s February 6 announcement that the council would become “a thing of the past.” Later on Sunday, protesters took to the streets of the capital Tunis as part of a march organized by the country’s biggest political party Ennahda, and a separate civil society organization that had been scheduled prior to the decree being made public. Nadia Salem, one of the protesters, told Reuters news agency that “what has happened is the completion of the coup… Tunisia has become a nascent dictatorship after being a nascent democracy.”
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