[MIDDLEEASTEYE.NET] A political stand-off between Tunisia's President Kais Saied, Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi, and a fragmented parliament is threatening to upend the country's fragile democratic transition 10 years after the outbreak of the Arab Spring.
The North African country, often hailed as the Arab world's only successful democracy after the 2011 uprisings, has been engulfed in economic and political turmoil since the 2019 elections that brought Saied, an independent, to power.
The same year also witnessed the election of a polarised parliament, where the moderate Islamist Ennahda, now the largest bloc, failed to gain a majority.
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The crisis was brought to the fore in mid-January, when Mechichi carried out a wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle, affecting in particular four ministers known for being allied to the president, who has in turn refused to swear in the nominees despite the approval of parliament.
The two largest parties in parliament, Ennahda and the liberal Qalb Tunis, have backed Mechichi in his dispute with Saied who has denounced the process of naming the new ministers as unconstitutional.
The 2014 constitution enshrined a mixed parliamentary-presidential system where conflicts would be settled through a constitutional court, which has yet to be formed due to political divisions.
The deadlock represents the climax of months of political conflict as the country struggles in the throes of an economic crisis.
Parties that threw their weight behind the divisive
...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled ...
reshuffle argue that it was aimed at injecting some political colour into the largely technocratic government.
"To us, a cabinet made up of independents, as imposed by Kais Saied, was a step backwards," Abdelkarim Harouni, president of the Shura council of the Ennahda movement, told Middle East Eye.
"It was as if we had no elections."
However,
the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything...
Mechichi’s move broke apart the rickety truce in his relationship with Saied and plunged the country into yet another period of political uncertainty.
For almost two months now, amid a deep financial crisis and mounting debt figures, the government remains in limbo since the prime minister turned a deaf ear to the president's call to step down.
CHANGING LOYALTIES
Mechichi, somewhat ironically, is a former protege of the president and was appointed in July last year as the successor to Elyes Fakhfakh, also a Saied nominee, who stepped down in June over allegations of a conflict of interest.
Once confirmed, major political parties perceived Mechichi's nomination as a power grab.
"Mechichi was not among the names proposed by political parties. Supposedly he was the most docile," Harouni says.
"Saied then placed his confidants in the new government."
Among their names were former interior minister Taoufik Charfeddine and former justice minister Mohammed Boussetta, both sacked by Mechichi in January.
Charfeddine was Saied’s former campaign leader in the coastal city of Sousse and Bousseta was a close colleague of his wife, Harouni said.
However,
the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything...
people around the president who spoke with MEE say it was all for the sake of public interest.
"Saied aimed to create stability. Therefore, confidence was the most important selection factor," Saied loyalist Malek Ezzahi says.
"In addition, he wanted to reserve key portfolios for people without party affiliation."
Seen from this angle, Ezzahi explains, picking Mechichi was somehow "natural".
"A man with a similar profile to the president: no political party affiliation and no political experience," Ezzahi says.
"He was the only independent in the previous government and already known as interior minister and adviser to the president. Unfortunately, he now betrays Saied and conspires with the political parties," Ezzahi added.
Ezzahi belongs to a self-portrayed "non-institutional organically evolving network" informally led by Saied that stems from the Kasbah sit-ins that followed the 2011 revolution after the expulsion of old-regime ministers.
It takes a different mindset to understand the new way of doing politics, Saied’s inner circle says.
"Kais Saied cooperates with the parliament as an institutional entity, but is entirely devoid of party politics. Compared to his predecessors, he invites a lot more ’ordinary people and movements’," Khalil Abbess, a member of the same network as Ezzahi, says.
However,
the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything...
this is the second presidential appointment in over a year-and-a-half that has ended in a political gridlock.
"Next time we will involve more civil society organizations in the process," Ezzahi pledges. 
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