Tunisia police block protests against Saied referendum

• Tunisian police clash with protesters against President Kais Saied.
• Around 100 people demonstrate against the July referendum, a year after his power grab opponents describe as a coup.

Tunisian police scuffled with protesters against President Kais Saied on Saturday as around 100 people demonstrated against a planned July referendum, a year after his power grab opponents describe as a coup.

The police blocked the protesters as they attempted to reach the headquarters of the electoral board whose chief Saied had replaced last month in a further move to extend his control of state institutions.

Some at the protest in the Tunisian capital, organized by five small political parties, held up placards reading “the president’s commission = fraud commission.”

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Meanwhile, Tunisian judges will suspend work in courts for a week and hold a sit-in to protest against the president’s firing of dozens of judges, a judge said on Saturday.

Saied this week dismissed 57 judges, accusing them of corruption and protecting terrorists in a purge of the judiciary — his latest step to tighten his grip on power in the North African country.

Judge Hammadi Rahmani said a judges’ meeting today voted unanimously to suspend work in all courts and to start the sit-in.

Saied on July 25 sacked the government and suspended parliament, which he later dissolved in moves that sparked fears for the only democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring uprisings.

He has laid out plans for a referendum next month on a replacement for a 2014 constitution that had enshrined a mixed parliamentary-presidential system often plagued by deadlock and nepotism.

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The president, who has also replaced the judicial supreme council and the electoral commission, has pledged to hold a referendum on July 25 to vote on a new constitution, and on Saturday talks overdrawing this up started in Carthage.

Then last month he appointed former ISIE member Farouk Bouasker to replace Nabil Baffoun, a critic of his July power grab.

Saied’s opponents accuse him of moving toward autocracy and putting in place a compliant electoral body ahead of the July referendum and parliamentary elections in December.

Many Tunisians however support his moves against a system they say has done little for their quality of life in the decade since a 2011 revolt that toppled dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

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