The National Interest Foundation invites you to attend our lunch discussion regarding the state of democracy in Tunisia under the current political crisis.

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Speakers

MP Maher Medhioub, Member of the Tunisian Parliament

MP Oussama Khlifi, Member of the Tunisian Parliament

MP Oussama Sghaier, Member of the Tunisian Parliament

Moderator

Khaled Saffuri, Founder and President of the National Interest Foundation (NIF)

About our Speakers: 

MP Maher Medhioub is a Member of the Tunisian House of People’s Representatives (Parliament), and Special Assistant to the President of the Parliament in charge of Media Relations and Communications. He was elected to the parliament in 2014, and then again in 2019. He served as a Representative of the youth on the Economic and Social Council between 1989 and 1992. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Media and Communications from the Arab University of Sciences in Tunis, in 1997, and worked for several years as journalist and media consultant/advisor with Al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar between 2008 and 2014.

MP Oussama Khlifi is a Member of the Tunisian Assembly of People’s Representatives, and president of Qalb Tounes party’s parliamentary bloc. He is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, of the Committee for the Organization of Administration and Affairs of Armed Forces, and of the Committee on Rules of Procedure, Immunity, Parliamentary Laws and Electoral Laws. He is also President of the Tunisian American Friendship Parliamentary Commission. He holds a master’s/MBA in political communication from the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he studied in 2007. He also got his baccalaureate in 1997. In 2013, he was the director of the late President Beji Caid Essebsi’s campaign abroad. From 2016 to 2018, he worked as the Executive Director of Nessma TV Channel, the Tunisian commercial channel broadcasting in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Mauritania. In 2019, Oussama Khlifi was a candidate for Qalb Tounes in the Tunisian legislative elections in the constituency of Tunis, the country’s capital. He also directed Qalb Tounes’ campaign for the presidential and legislative elections.

MP Oussama Sghaier is a Member of the Tunisian Parliament. When Ben Ali took over, Mr. Sghaier was forced to flee the country with his family. After 17 years spent in Italy as a political refugee, he returned in 2011, immediately following the revolution and fall of Ben Ali. Mr. Sghaier was elected to the Tunisian National Constitutional Assembly in October 2011 for the Ennahdha Movement, in the Italy constituency. He was elected to the committee that prepared the Temporary Law for the Organisation of Powers, or “mini constitution,” in force in Tunisia until the election of a new Parliament. He was also a member of the assembly committee working on the Chapter of the Constitution dealing with the relation between the legislative power and the executive power (political system), and a member of the committee on transitional justice. Mr. Sghaier is a member of Ennahdha Party’s political bureau. He was re-elected in 2014 and 2019 as a member of Tunisia’s Assembly of the People’s Representatives for the constituency of Italy. He is a member of the Tunisian Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee as well as the commission for investigation on networks involved in sending Tunisian youth to conflict zones.

About our Moderator: 

Khaled Saffuri is the Founder and President of the National Interest Foundation (NIF), a nonpartisan think tank and nonprofit organization established in April of 2018 which is focused on bettering relationships between the United States and countries across the globe through the promotion of smarter foreign policy. Mr. Saffuri has previously served as a Principal at Meridian Strategies providing international business and government clients with unparalleled strategic and public affairs consulting services, and also founded and ran one of the United States’ prominent and most active organizations to represent the Middle East and Muslim-Americans. He has worked for many years with Members of Congress and has testified in front of Congressional Committees, advising them on international issues and leading Congressional delegations to the Middle East. Due to his extensive background and expertise, Mr. Saffuri is a regular contributor to a number of important media outlets in the United States and internationally including CNN, CBS, and BBC and contributes articles and written publications to outlets such as The Washington Post and The American Conservative.