Four readings of a record month, and a count that won't take a side
July brought Tunisia its highest monthly protest count in a decade, most of it over water and power cuts during a summer of record heat. That count reopened a question that predates it: is Tunisia's state failing, or just short of investment? An economist, a Brookings fellow, an activist and the government answer it from different moments over the past three months; the forum that did the counting declines to.
Where they agree
Nobody here disputes that water and power failures drove most of July's protests; it is the one fact repeated in every source that touches the month directly.
Where they split
The sharpest clash is between Zaâfrani Zenzri, who frames 2027 around investment and unblocking stalled projects as the fix, and Belhadj, who says growth already looks disconnected from productive investment and is partly a statistical illusion. Sghaier and Grewal both read the underlying cracks as evidence of a state that is failing, one politically and one institutionally; nothing in Zaâfrani's cited plan answers that reading.
What nobody is saying
Nobody here explains why Zaâfrani Zenzri's investment plan, as reported, does not mention water or electricity by name, the two causes behind most of July's count.
Sghaier was among the hundreds of protesters who marched in Tunis on 20 August demanding Kais Saied's removal and the release of jailed opposition figures. Speaking to Reuters at the march, he called it a complete collapse.
”The country is experiencing a complete collapse.”The country is experiencing a complete collapse.
Grewal argues Saied's usual playbook, blaming corrupt elites and foreign conspiracies, has stopped working after five years, because citizens now want fixed power and water rather than new scapegoats. He points to power cuts that have reached hospitals and, he says, cost lives, and to a parliament where deputies are openly demanding the president testify and drafting censure motions, cracks he reads as coming from inside the system itself.
”Les coupures de courant, y compris dans les hôpitaux, ont même entraîné la mort de certaines personnes.”The power cuts, including in hospitals, have even caused some people's deaths.
Belhadj does not speak of collapse. His warning is narrower and, he says, more urgent: growth looks reassuring on paper but is precarious, disconnected from productive investment, and partly inflated by a favourable statistical base effect. He says real GDP only began recovering its pre-pandemic level in 2025, evidence of a chronic structural weakness that leaves the economy exposed to shocks such as regional tensions driving up energy costs.
The government does not frame this as crisis but as a plan already under way. At the 19 August cabinet meeting she chaired, the 2027 economic outline was built around investment, wealth creation and unblocking stalled projects as the main growth drivers, alongside a more competitive business climate, balanced regional development and the energy transition.
Ben Amor's forum does not take a side on collapse or resilience; it publishes the count. Its July report puts water and power complaints at over 60 percent of all protest movements, up 168 percent from May's 411. The report itself does not say whether the trend will keep rising.