Tunisian President Kais Saied on Tuesday ousted Prime Minister Najla Buden, who was appointed less than two years ago when she became the first woman to hold the position in the country’s history. “Saied decided on the night of this Tuesday, August 1, 2023, to terminate Najla Buden’s duties as head of government and to appoint Ahmed al Hashani as her successor.”
The Tunisian presidency has shared some images in which Saied supervises the inauguration of the new head of government, to whom the president wishes success “in this responsibility which corresponds to him in this particular circumstance”. “There are great challenges that we must face with firm determination and a strong will to preserve our homeland, our state and civil peace within society,” Saied said in a short speech collected by the Tunisian news agency TAP .
For his part, Al Hashani, who previously held the position of general director of legal affairs at the Central Bank of Tunisia, called “to preserve the state and the harmony and integration of the institutions”, underlining that “the Tunisian state is one and we must preserve it and respond to the needs of the people”. Since July 2021, Saied has promoted a series of measures to reform the Tunisian political system, including a constitutional referendum, approved in the midst of the opposition boycott, which strengthens the powers of the presidency. The opposition has denounced the president’s authoritarian drift and has called for his resignation.