When thousands of people marched down Avenue Bourguiba, in central Tunis, on Sept. 13 to protest against Tunisian President Kais Saied’s rule, his response was to immediately blame the disruption on foreign agitators.
Granted, the size of the crowd—estimated by domestic media reports to be between 2,000 and 3,000 people—was far from the masses of people that over weeks of protests ousted then-Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. It was small even compared to some of the numerous protests that occasionally shook the country in the years after the revolution kickstarted its halting transition to democracy.
However, the mid-September demonstration, less than a month ahead of Tunisia’s presidential election on Oct. 6, was the biggest expression of opposition to Saied’s increasingly authoritarian rule in the past two years. Protesters chanted, “Out with the dictator Saied,” and held signs demanding a fair election.