Tunisian police have locked the doors of the country’s Supreme Judicial Council and also prevented staff from entering the building, a day after President Kais Saied dissolved it.
The move on Monday, February 7, 2022, came after Tunisian judges rejected Saied’s decision to disband the council that oversees them, raising fears about the independence of the judiciary amid growing concerns over his merging of power.
Saied announced over the weekend that he was dissolving the Supreme Judicial Council, one of the few remaining state bodies still able to act independently of him. The move covered months of sharp criticism of the country’s judiciary, which he has accused of corruption and being infiltrated by his political enemies.
Supreme Judicial Council Head, Youssef Bouzakher said “The president has moved to the stage of seizing institutions. What is happening is very dangerous and illegal.”
Bouzakher told the media that there were no legitimate legal or constitutional mechanisms to allow the president to dissolve the council.
A judicial source also disclosed to the media that the Tunisian police were preventing employees of the council from entering the Judicial quarters.
Meanwhile, the Head of the Tunisian Judges Association said members were consulting on the next steps to protect the judiciary and the sanctity of the courts.
On Sunday, February 6, 2022, two other judicial organisations condemned the move as unconstitutional.
The Young Magistrates Association said it was part of a political elimination strategy of the judiciary, while the Judges Association said Saied was trying to amass all powers in his own hands.
In July 2021, Saied suddenly suspended parliament and dismissed the Prime Minister, the first in a series of moves his critics branded a coup. He later took steps to rule by decree, and he has since said he will rewrite the 2014 democratic constitution before putting it to a public referendum.
Saied has however rejected coup allegations and has pledged to uphold rights and freedoms won in the country’s 2011 revolution that introduced democracy. His critics, however, say he is leaning increasingly on the security forces and fear he will take a harsher stance against the opposition.
According to a local reporter, Elizia Volkmann, reporting from Tunis, he said “The conflict between the judges and the president seems far from over.”
Ennahdha (Tunisian political party) leader, Rached Ghannouchi, who is also the speaker of the suspended parliament, said in a statement on Sunday, February 6, 2022, that the body rejected Saied’s decision to dissolve the top judicial council and voiced solidarity with the judges.
Three other political parties, Attayar, Joumhouri and Ettakatol, issued a joint statement rejecting the move.
Saied, who was a constitutional law professor before running for president in 2019, has repeatedly said the judiciary should remember it represents a function of the state rather than being the state itself.
In January 2022, he revoked financial privileges for the council’s members, accusing the independent body established in 2016 of appointing judges to their positions based on loyalty to its leadership.
“Their place is not where they sit now, but where the accused stand,” Saied said of the council members in his overnight speech, delivered from the building of the Interior Ministry, which oversees Tunisia’s security forces.
Saied called on supporters to protest against the council on Sunday, February 6, 2022, but only a few hundred people turned up. Some held a banner saying: “The people want to cleanse the judiciary.”
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