President Kaïs Saïed, candidate for re-election, urged Tunisians to mobilize en masse at the polls on Sunday, October 6, to avoid any “go back”. “It is an encounter with history. You should not hesitate for a single second.”declared from his campaign headquarters, in a video broadcast on Thursday, October 3, while continuing to warn once again against his opponents, whom he accuses of conspiring against the national interest with the support of “foreign powers”. This will be his only speech as a candidate since the start of the election campaign.
Almost five years have passed since the election of Kaïs Saïed, a constitutional law professor with no previous electoral experience, who acceded to the supreme position on October 13, 2019 with 72.7% of the votes in the second round. The one we initially nicknamed “Robopolice”, Due to his monotone tone and fixed expression, he became, at the age of 61, the second president elected by direct universal suffrage in free elections in Tunisia, after Béji Caïd Essebsi.
How could an outsider, without a political party or experience in the state apparatus, prevail at the head of the country? And how did someone who embodied integrity and probity shift to an authoritarian stance after his coup d’état on July 25, 2021, the date on which he assumed full powers?
Born in Tunisia on February 22, 1958 into a middle-class family – his father was an official in the Ministry of Finance and his mother, from the Tunisian bourgeoisie, a housewife – Kaïs Saïed grew up in Radès, in the suburbs from the south of the capital. He attended Sadiki College, a prestigious establishment that had trained state executives and renowned intellectuals.
An affable teacher who commands respect.
“His propagandists and supporters highlight the modest origins of this “son of the people.” The interested party remembers that he lives in the popular neighborhood of El Mnihla, on the outskirts of Tunisia. But if we look closer, this modesty is a bit mythologized.”judges the essayist Hatem Nafti in his book Our friend Kaïs Saïed, essay on Tunisian democracy (ed. Riveneuve, September 2024).
Kaïs Saïed then continued his studies in public law without even defending his thesis, becoming an assistant professor specialized in constitutional law. He spent his teaching career at the University of Sousse and then at the Tunis Faculty of Law. Married to Judge Ichraf Chebil – who was his former student – he is the father of three children. Numerous testimonies from classmates and former students describe an affable person who, despite his austere appearance, inspired respect.
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