Tunisia's President Saied received first draft of constitution

A legal expert charged with writing a new constitution presented a draft to Tunisian President Kais Saied Monday, less than a month before a referendum on the document.

The head of Tunisia's constitution committee charged with writing a new constitution has delivered a draft of new constitution to President Kais Saied on Monday, with expectations that the document will grant more powers to the president.

The president intends to put the new constitution to a referendum on July 25, the one year anniversary of a power grab by Saied that saw him sack the government and suspend an elected parliament, though the opposition has said it would boycott the plebiscite.

The coordinator of the National Consultative Commission for a New Republic Mr. Sadok Belaïd who handed the draft to the president at his palace in the coastal Tunis district of Carthage, said “The conditions for drafting the Constitution, were difficult because of the short time we had at our disposal. But we managed, thanks to everyone’s efforts, to submit this first version of the Constitution. We hope that this would satisfy Mr. President.”

In a statement, Saied said the draft “is not final, and some sections may be revised or given further thought.”

Under his own timeline, Saied has until June 30 to approve or edit the draft constitution, which has not yet been disclosed in any form to the public.

The constitution for a “new republic” is at the center of Saied’s program for rebuilding Tunisia’s political system, more than a decade after the revolution that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.

Saied this year consolidated his power grab by dissolving parliament, moving to rule by decree and seizing control of the judiciary.

His moves have been welcomed by some Tunisians tired of their dysfunctional post-revolution democracy, but others have warned he is returning the country to autocracy, little more than a decade after the ouster of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Saied wants to replace the current constitution, the product of a hard-won 2014 compromise between bitter political rivals that enshrined a mixed parliamentary-presidential system that often produced deadlock.

Tunisian Bar president Ibrahim Bouderbala, who headed a committee taking part in Saied’s “national dialogue” over the constitution, told AFP that under the draft, “the president of the republic will control the executive.”

The draft also “takes particular interest in economic questions,” he said.

In an interview earlier this month, Belaid had told AFP that he would remove all reference to Islam from the new document in order to challenge Islamist parties, a reference to Ennahdha, which has dominated Tunisian politics since 2011.