Kais Saied (Arabic: قَيْس سْعَيِّد  ; born 22 February 1958) is a Tunisian politician, jurist and retired assistant professor of law currently serving as the seventh president of Tunisia since October 2019.

Having worked in various legal and academic roles since the 1980s, Saied joined the 2019 presidential election as an independent social conservative supported by Ennahda and others across the political spectrum.

Running with little campaigning, Saied sought to appeal to younger voters, and pledged to combat corruption and reform the electoral system.

While a visiting professor at several Arab universities, in 2013 he refused to be part of the commission of experts whose mission was to find a legal solution to the problem of the Independent High Authority for Elections.

[15] Despite being supported by Ennahdha in the election and holding socially conservative positions, Saied did not describe himself as an Islamist and had advisers from across the political spectrum.

Several media sources[12][17][21] referred to Saied as "RoboCop", given his monotonous voice, his use of Standard Arabic rather than Tunisian dialect, and his focus on law and order issues.

On the same day, Kaïs Saïed chose his brother Naoufel, also a professor of constitutional law, to appoint the advisers and members of the presidential cabinet.

On 23 October, at the Presidential Palace of Carthage, after taking his oath before the outgoing Assembly, during which he promises to fight against terrorism and its causes, as well as to guarantee the gains of Tunisian women, while strengthening his economic and social rights, he sees the interim president, Mohamed Ennaceur, transferring presidential powers to him.

Saied refused to stay at the presidential palace of Carthage, preferring his villa in Mnihla, located in the governorate of Ariana.

Abderraouf Bettaïeb is Minister-Advisor to the President of the Republic, Rachida Ennaifer in charge of communication, while Nadia Akacha is responsible for legal affairs.

On 15 November 2019, he appointed Habib Jemli, the candidate for Ennahdha, to the post of head of government and charged him with forming a cabinet.

In June 2020, according to Al Jazeera, "an independent member of Parliament published documents indicating that Fakhfakh owned shares in companies that won deals worth 44 million dinars".

[35] The president's decisions were also denounced by human rights organizations and considered by several foreign media outlets and Tunisian political entities as a self-coup.

[45][46][47] On 5 January 2022, the Tunisian judiciary referred 19 predominantly high-ranking politicians to court for "electoral violations" allegedly committed during the 2019 presidential elections.

Among the 19 were four former prime ministers, Youssef Chahed, Elyes Fakhfakh, Mehdi Jomaa and Hamadi Jebali, as well as former president Moncef Marzouki, and the head of the Ennahda party movement, Rachid Ghannouchi.

[49] According to the country's justice minister, the Tunisian President has indicated that rather than eliminating the Supreme Judicial Council, he will restructure it.

[50] As a result of the President's decisions, more than two hundred judges and attorneys in black robes demonstrated outside the main court in Tunisia's capital on Thursday, 10 February 2022.

[53] After the referendum results indicated that 90% of voters supported Saied, albeit with a turnout of only 30.5%, he declared victory and promised that Tunisia will enter the new phase after he got increased power, some of which was unchecked.

[68] He received Muslim, Jewish, and Christian religious figures,[69] rejected diplomatic recognition of Israel, and called for not conflating Judaism with Zionism.

It was announced in September 2023 that the name of the Storm Daniel that destroyed Libya reflects the influence of the global Zionist movement.

[66] In November 2023, after endorsing him, he called on the House of People's Representatives to abandon voting on a law proposed by his supporters that would criminalize recognizing Israel or maintaining contacts, see Invitation of Israeli Citizens to Tunisia, who would be punished with twelve years in prison and then life imprisonment if the offense is repeated.

[72] He justifies his decision by protecting the country's security, and believes that the law is unnecessary because communicating with the enemy is already a crime and covers normalization in the first place.

[74] In September 2022, the Tunisian president Kais Saied signed Decree Law 54, which purported to combat "false information and rumours" on the Internet.

[77] While the government of Kais Saied has tried taking some measures to address the problem, "Tunisians were, globally, the population most dissatisfied with efforts to preserve the environment (tied with Lebanon), according to a Gallup poll".