Carthage's silence became the best soil for rumour
From July 8 to July 18, President Kaïs Saïed received no one at Carthage, chaired no publicised meeting and made no announced visit: at a time when the country was living through daily power cuts, water outages and a heatwave, with no presidential meeting on the crisis announced. Business News also notes that he sent Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Nafti to convey Tunisia's condolences in Doha after the death of Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani on July 12, departing from his own precedent of travelling in person. The same newsroom's fact-check found that a clip circulating as a July 17 presidential response to the rumours is in fact from April 3, 2023, with then-prime minister Najla Bouden at his side. The story is not the rumour but the vacuum: when the presidency says nothing, any old video becomes news.