By james art Weeks after winning re-election with 90.7% of the vote, the 66-year-old former law professor called for a “cultural revolution” to fight unemployment, terrorism and root out corruption.
“The goal is to build a country where everyone can live in dignity,” Sayed said in a speech to members of the Tunisian parliament.
Mr Sayed’s re-election on October 7 came after a tumultuous first term during which he suspended the country’s parliament, rewrote its constitution after the Arab Spring and jailed dozens of his critics in politics, media, business and civil society.
He justified elements of the crackdown as necessary to fight corruption and enemies of the state, using populism to appeal to Tunisians disillusioned with the direction his predecessors had taken the country after national protests led to the ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben But in 2011.
Mr Sayed has vowed to target “thieves and traitors on the foreign payroll” and blamed “counter-revolutionary forces” for obstructing his efforts to shore up Tunisia’s struggling economy during his first term in power.
“The task was not easy. The dangers were great,” he said. “The weapons of the old regime were like vipers circulating everywhere. We could hear them hissing even if we couldn’t see them.
Although Mr Sayed pledged to respect freedoms, many journalists were prevented from covering his swearing-in on Monday, prompting a rebuke from the National Union of Tunisian Journalists, which expressed its “strong condemnation of the continued blackout policy and restrictions on journalism work” in a statement.