The Tunisian president refuses the IMF recommendations
IMF HQ
The President of Tunisia, Kais Saied, rejected the “dictations” of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an institution that conditions the granting of a loan to Tunisia on economic reforms and the elimination of public subsidies. “As far as the IMF is concerned, the dictates from abroad that only lead to more poverty are unacceptable,” the Tunisian president told the media in the city of Monastir, on the sidelines of a ceremony commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the death of the father of Tunisia’s independence. Habib Bourguiba. The alternative would be “to rely on ourselves”, he added, answering a question. Tunisia, a country with an external debt that reaches 80% of its GDP, obtained an agreement in principle with the IMF in October for a new loan of about two billion dollars that would help it overcome the serious financial crisis it is going through. But discussions on the details have stalled in the absence of a commitment from the Tunisian government to implement a reform program to restructure around 100 heavily indebted state-owned companies and eliminate subsidies for some basic products.
“We have to find other ideas, because social peace is not a game or something that can be treated lightly,” indicated the country’s president, recalling the “bread riots” that took place in the 1980s during the Bourguiba regime. In December 1983, the Tunisian authorities decided to eliminate subsidies for cereal products. The consequence was the drastic increase in the price of bread, semolina, and pasta, which led to riots and the imposition of a state of emergency. In the end, the official death toll of the riot victims was dozens, but in reality it was much higher, according to some NGOs. The current president, Kais Saied, assumed full powers in July 2021, dismissed the prime minister, and dissolved the parliament, a setback to the democracy established in the first uprising of the so-called “Arab Spring” in the Middle East and North Africa. The new Constitution, adopted by referendum in July 2022, created a hyper-presidential political system and reduced the powers of the parliament to almost zero. In addition to these developments, the Tunisian president provoked protests from the European Union and the UN after declaring that “hordes” of illegal migrants have become a source of “violence and crimes” and that their presence in Tunisia is part of a “criminal act” intended to change the demographic composition of his country. However, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have called for international support for Tunisia. European officials now fear that Tunisia could become, after Libya, a new turning point for clandestine migration from Africa to Europe. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, thus warned that the situation in Tunisia has become “very dangerous” and he also mentioned the risk of a “collapse” of this state, a situation likely to “cause migratory flows to the EU and lead to instability in the African region of the North and the Middle East”.
By Cora Sulleyman
