Should Restoring Public Efficiency Involve Creating a Bloated Government Whose Sole Mission Is to Hunt Down Everyday Sources of Inertia Spread Across Local, Regional, and Central Administration?
The deliberately provocative question reveals less a bureaucratic temptation than a deep malaise: an administrative apparatus in which, from time to time, resistant pockets still manage to block even the most modest projects.
A Proximity‑Driven Approach
In this perspective, President Kaïs Saïed’s actions fit a logic of assumed proximity.
His field visits and direct exchanges with citizens are not mere ritual; they are part of a method.
Listen, observe, confront diagnoses with lived reality—that is the architecture of a governance that seeks legitimacy through immediate contact with the people.
It is not only about identifying grievances, but about thinking together with local actors of the levers for a concerted mobilisation, where patriotic energies combine toward a coherent national strategy.
Combating Dilatory Practices
On numerous occasions, the Head of State has denounced dilatory practices, obstructionist maneuvers, and behaviours that strip public action of its substance.
The “clean‑up” of the administration, mentioned in his talks with the Prime Minister Sarra Zaâfrani Zenzri, is not merely a moral injunction; it is a structural imperative.
Administrative inertia is not neutral: it delays investments, sustains regional disparities, and weakens citizens’ trust in institutions.
Why Impunity Persists
What fuels the sense of impunity that seems to encourage some officials to persist in inaction or defiance?
The diagnosis has been made: permissiveness inherited from years of laxity, insufficient control mechanisms, and diluted responsibilities.
A Laborious Tunisia Pushes Forward
Opposing these drifts is a hardworking Tunisia—one that undertakes, produces, and creates. A Tunisia that, far from fatalistic discourse, continues its building project.
During the month of Ramadan, the mobilisation observed in market supply, the animation of worship spaces, and cultural vitality demonstrate an undeniable capacity for organisation and resilience.
It reminds us that modernising the State does not stem from incantations or institutional over‑reach, but from a constant will to reform, a demand for responsibility, and fidelity to the principles of sovereignty and social justice.
Restoring Authority, Not Adding Structures
The challenge is not to add more structures, but to restore the authority of the rule of law, the primacy of the general interest, and a results‑oriented culture.
Only at this price will public action regain full efficiency and civic trust be sustainably reinforced.
