Tunisian President’s Top Aide Quits Citing Differences

Tunisian President Kais Saied’s chief of staff and closest adviser Nadia Akacha has announced her resignation due what she says are fundamental differences in opinion over the country’s interests.

Taking to social media without elaborating, she wrote that she is faced with fundamental differences in opinion regarding Tunisia’s best interests adding that it was her duty to withdraw.

Akacha has been Saied’s closest aide since he rose to office in a 2019 landslide and since his July moves to suspend parliament and assume executive power in a measure his foes call a coup.

There was no immediate comment or official confirmation of her resignation from the presidential palace.

Akacha had been described by Tunisian government officials, foreign diplomats and former president staff as Saied’s closest and most trusted adviser and the conduit for almost all interactions with him.

Saied’s seizure of broad powers and declared plans to redraw the constitution have cast Tunisia’s decade-old democratic system into doubt and hindered a push for an international rescue plan for public finances.

The president has initiated an online public consultation before drafting a new constitution that he says will be put to a referendum, but has not brought major political or civil society players into the process.

Though his actions appeared to have broad support at first among Tunisians weary of economic stagnation and political paralysis, political leaders have voiced increasing opposition.