Ka�s Sa�ed in the Land of the Soviets

Whoever said that the Soviet Union is dead does not know that there is still a village, pardon a country, which still resists the Western capitalist invasion which plunders sovereign and worthy peoples. This country is the Tunisia of Kaïs Saïed, president with multiple self-attributed prerogatives, whose words attract the masses and stir up the crowds.

Thursday, October 21, President Saïed delivers a half-hour speech during a ministerial council which he chairs. We think we hear a disciple of Lenin. A dunce disciple who doesn't really master his subject, he mixes up everything and only sees what he wants to see.

From Kaïs Saïed's speech, there are the ingredients of Sovietism, but not the recipe, nor even the name of the dish he wants to cook. We tell you, Kaïs Saïed mixes everything up and remains stuck on received ideas and worn-out prejudices.

From the acute conspiracy, Kaïs Saïed serves us a good shot, convinced (and rightly so) that this will quench the thirst of his audience.

Moreover, it is no surprise that his fans got up this morning to insult the European Parliament guilty of having voted, yesterday, a motion in which it expresses its concern about the situation in Tunisia.

In his October 21 speech, Kaïs Saïed criticizes the Tunisian political system and the tailor-made electoral code. Mean by that, tailor-made by the Islamist party Ennahdha to serve its own interests. Except that the president forgets that it is this same system that he criticizes which allowed him to access the supreme magistracy, as well as his predecessor Béji Caïd Essebsi. But neither of them belong to this Ennahdha which, allegedly, has made a tailor-made system. Just a reminder of an arithmetic reality that the president hides, if we had an electoral system different from the current one, Ennahdha would have weighed more heavily in the assembly.

Kaïs Saïed also forgets that he is doing exactly what he blames his opponents for. It was he who read, in his convoluted way, article 80 of the constitution and it was he who laid down decree 117 giving him prerogatives that no president in the world possesses! In terms of made-to-measure, our president has really created a first.

Continuing in his speech, the president made the nationalist fiber vibrate in his listeners by pinning, without quoting them, the European parliament and the American congress. “Respecting our choices is a prelude to everything. Tunisia is not a number to discuss its internal affairs abroad. Have we discussed, in our councils of ministers, the internal affairs of a European or American country? Our sovereignty is not questionable! »

This appeals, without a doubt, to the groupies. What Kaïs Saïed utters is just a bad remake of what we heard from Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez or Muammar Gueddafi, when they spoke of Westerners wishing them harm and jealous of their model.

The President of the Republic makes a double mixture and confuses his own choices with the choices of Tunisia. It seems, to hear him, that the State is him, that the people are him and that Tunisia is him. He does not hesitate, throughout the speech, to say that those who criticize him are attacking Tunisia and its interests, going so far as to accuse them of high treason.

There is however an incongruity in the sovereignism of Kaïs Saïed, because when we are worthy and sovereign, we will not beg for our budget from other countries. The President of the Republic is called upon to re-read his Marx manuals again. It is far from it.

Continuing his attacks against this “foreigner” who interferes in our internal affairs, the President of the Republic invites us to return all the money looted from Tunisia, placed in the banks. “Tunisia has a lot of money, it is enough for the thieves to return it and for the foreign banks to return it”.

There, it is no longer Kaïs Saïed in the land of the Soviets, but rather Kaïs Saïed in wonderland. He just ignores that the money is not returned on simple presidential decision and that there are long and complex procedures for that. This overall. Then, he still does not admit that the stolen money placed in foreign accounts exists only in his head and that even if it is returned, it will not solve Tunisia's economic problems. The stolen money is counted, at best, in a few million dinars, while the country's budget deficit is counted in billions of dinars.

Kaïs Saïed sweeps away all of a sudden and tells us about a politician who would have, on his own, received some five hundred million dollars that he would have placed in a foreign account. An amount that allows him to obtain the nationality of any country (including US) and go live there.

Once again he asks us the question of the 13,500 billion and, once again, he does not specify whether he is speaking in dinars or in millimes, in euros or in dollars.

Continuing, he attacks investors. “We have been encouraging investment for sixty years and there is no investment. Why ? Because they steal the money! ". And how has the country been operating for sixty years, Mr. President? Who is employing millions of Tunisians, Mr. President? Never mind. The ministers gathered around him are silent and the crowd, on social networks, is delighted.

As in the days of the Soviets, the objective is not to tell the truth, he just needs to harangue the crowds. In this, Kaïs Saïed proves to be of formidable talent.

Addressing the question of the national dialogue, Kaïs Saïed solemnly affirms, once again, that he is not ready for a Carthage III. It does not matter that one of these national dialogues ended with a Nobel Peace Prize, that is incompatible with the vision of Kaïs Saïed. Perhaps, too, because the Nobel is a mark created by these Westerners who strip us and steal from us.

In any case, Kaïs Saïed says he is ready for a dialogue with young people and all citizens via a platform that will be set up soon. The dialogue will last three, or maybe five or maybe six months. "We will see the ceiling later," said the president, who did not retain Lenin's lessons in punctuality.

On the other hand, he has learned his lessons on exclusion well and we now know with whom the dialogue will not take place: thieves, those who have sold their souls abroad, those who beg foreigners (guilty of high treason).

In his lyrical flight, Kaïs Saïed forgets the dialogue and devotes a few minutes to these "traitors" guilty of doing worse than the sellouts of the time of the protectorate. "Or colonization," he catches up.

The disciple Kaïs Saïed saves the best for the end to spread all that he learned in the books of the Soviets and this by attacking capital. Ah, this wicked capital! “It has infiltrated education and health. And even in transport! They broke the public service to benefit the private sector! In the past, we didn't hear about private education, or very little! ". There, Kaïs Saïed cannot fail to seduce the crowds, he hits the bullseye.

He continues his flight to pin all those people who drive in luxury cars and import superfluous products. “What does it mean to import vehicles worth hundreds of thousands of dinars, while people are starving and walking for miles to go to school. Isn't this a crime against these school children? he wonders.

It can't not work! Such a sentence is capable of bringing back, by itself, five points to the popularity of the president.

But does he know that the number of luxury cars, imported every year, does not exceed at best, a thousand cars? Does he know that the various taxes imposed on this type of vehicle reach 200% and that what the State reaps on the back of these cars is greater than the profit margin of the manufacturer, the dealer and all the intermediaries?

Does he know that this lust and jealousy can only lead to civil war or, at best, to the revolt of the poor against the rich?

“We want comfort for the people, but in a state of war we have to observe austerity”, tempers Kaïs Saïed.

Austerity ! Here we are at last, the word is pronounced. When Kaïs Saïed talks about austerity, he asks the people that. But what is the fault of these people, rich and poor alike, if the State has been leading an expensive lifestyle for ten years? If this State has increased its expenses with tens of thousands of recruitments, among the so-called victims of the old regime? That this same state has created hundreds of ecological companies to place thousands of unemployed people who have been receiving salaries without doing anything for years. If each of these fictitious employees planted a single tree, the Tunisian desert would be a forest now.

What is the fault of these people, called upon to observe austerity and do without luxury cars and superfluous products, if the State refuses to privatize loss-making companies and to open up certain sectors to competition? What is also wrong if we have laws that promote corruption and handicap investors? Why would this same austerity not apply to the budget of the Presidency of the Republic which soared by 44% between 2019 and 2021?

Rather than attacking the real basic problems, than attacking the source of corruption, Kaïs Saïed prefers to ride the easy populist wave.

Is he wrong? If the country risks paying very dearly for this behavior, and for generations, it is not the same for the President of the Republic. This Soviet nationalist discourse succeeds in its speakers, it pleases the crowd, the pack. It worked in Stalin's time, it allowed Viktor Orban and Donald Trump to become heads of state and it kept Fidel Castro and Muammar Geddafi in power for decades. Long live the revolution!

Raouf Ben Hedi