Tunisia: Kais Saïed takes oath for his 2nd presidential term

Tunisian President Kais Saied has been sworn in for a second term, following a months-long crackdown and a series of arrests against his political opponents.

A few weeks after being re-elected with 90.7% of the vote, this 66-year-old former law professor called, in his investiture speech, for a "cultural revolution" to fight unemployment, terrorism and corruption.

"The goal is to build a country where everyone can live with dignity," Saied said in a speech to members of the Tunisian parliament.

Mr. Saied’s re-election on October 7 came after a turbulent first term in office in which he suspended the country’s parliament, rewrote its post-Arab Spring constitution and jailed dozens of his critics in politics, the media, business and civil society.

He justified some crackdowns as necessary to combat corruption and enemies of the state, using populism to appeal to Tunisians disillusioned with the direction his predecessors took the country after nationwide protests that led to the ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

He vowed to tackle "thieves and traitors in the pay of foreigners" and blamed "counter-revolutionary forces" for obstructing his efforts to support Tunisia's struggling economy throughout his first term.

"The task was not easy. The dangers were great," he said. "The weapons of the old regime were like vipers that moved everywhere. You could hear them hissing, even if you couldn't see them. "

Although Mr. Saied has proclaimed his commitment to respecting freedoms, many journalists were prevented from covering his swearing-in ceremony on Monday, leading to a rebuke from the National Union of Tunisian Journalists, which expressed “its strong condemnation of the ongoing blackout policy and restrictions imposed on journalistic work” in a press release issued Monday.