PARIS — After its recent slide toward authoritarianism, Tunisia's latest turn in the spotlight has come courtesy of anti-immigrant rhetoric from its president.  

Tunisia was the very country that started the Arab Spring in December 2010, when street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze. Democratic governance survived there long after other Arab upheavals melted into civil strife, armed jihad or military dictatorship. Populist candidate Kais Saied won the presidential election in October 2019 by a landslide, in reaction against a corrupt and inefficient parliament.

But the former law instructor dissolved the parliament in July 2021. Since then he has ruled by decree, putting the former independent judiciary under his control and jailing dozens of judges. The turnout for the January 2023 parliamentary elections was only 11%, and since then an array of political figures have been arrested, dubbed terrorists or agents of foreign conspiracies, while judges who might release them were called “would-be accomplices.”

In this context, Saied made a stir as he used strong-worded language against “hordes ("jahafil" in Arabic — a term used for locusts) of Africans” whom he accused of distorting Tunisia's “Arab and Islamic identity.”