Tunisia: Parliament has first session since 2021 suspension

The recently elected members of Tunisia's new parliament met to hold their first session on Monday, almost 20 months after the body was suspended in July 2021.

Lawmakers were elected in January and December, in a poll boycotted by opposition parties and most of the electorate. Turnout was only 11%.

Monday's session comes after President Kais Saied spent more than a year and a half consolidating power and ruling by decree.

Only journalists from state-controlled media were allowed entry into the parliament to report on the session. Journalists from foreign and private outlets protested outside the building.

The main opposition bloc shunned the session which they say came about via a "putschist constitution and elections shunned by the overwhelming majority of voters."

Opposition bloc rejects new parliament

Lawmakers on Monday voted on who would become the new parliamentary speaker, belatedly replacing Rached Ghannouchi, the head of the Islamist movement Ennahdha, who held the position when Saied suspended the parliament.

Ennahdha had been the largest political party in parliament and remains a key player in the main opposition bloc, the National Salvation Front.

The new parliament will be run according to rules outlined in the new constitution Saied pushed through with a referendum in July last year that grants him wide-ranging powers.

The parliament can no longer impeach the president, or even hold the government to account. Bills that the president puts forward will also be given greater priority than those of other lawmakers.

Only 154 of the 161 seats in parliament have been filled — due to the lack of candidates for representatives of Tunisians living abroad — and of those, only 25 are held by female representatives.

Tunisia's democratic legacy

Monday's session comes amid a growing crackdown on Islamists and migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, as well as journalists and other dissenting voices in the country.

Saied's power grab has caused concern among international observers especially due to Tunisia's symbolic importance as the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings over a decade ago that led to the downfall of unelected leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Until July 2021, Tunisia had been the only one that had managed to hold on to democratically elected leaders after the military took back power in Egypt and a civil war broke out in Libya.

ab/ar (AP, AFP, dpa)