sarah yerkes: from where i stand, it is a coup.if you look at the constitution, the way the president is justifying this there is no way that you read this that looks like it is justified. nick: saied he is an outsider. but while he was campaigning, he did warn that he wanted to direct democracy, rather than a parliamentary democracy. we know what his intentions are? sarah: unfortunately, he is really a black box. you don't know what his long game is. it seems right now that he's looking to consolidate power in the hands of one person, and that person happens to be him. so, i think, in the long run, he's probably trying to turn tunisia into more of a presidential authoritarian system than a parliamentary one. but, unfortunately, he hasn't really told us yet what his long-term plans are. nick: what are tunisian so excited about today. -- today? sarah: tunisia, unfortunately, is undergoing multiple crises at the same time. the biggest one right now is the pandemic they are having their , worst covid numbers of the entire pandemic as

response i'm joined by sarah yerkes senior fellow at the carnegie endowment for international studieslcome to the newshour so was this a coup. >> from where i stand it is a coup. i think if you look at the constitution, the way the president is justifying this, there is no way that you read this that looks like it's justified. is he not allowed to dissolve particle am, that is against the constitution, so to me that is a coup. >> schifrin: he did warn that he wanted a direct democracy rather than a parliamentary democracy, do we know what his intentions are, do we know what his goals are? >> unfortunately he's really a black box. we don't know what his long game is here. it seems right now that he's looking to consolidate power in the hands of one person and that person happens to be him. so i think in the long run he's probably trying to turn tunisia into more of a presidential, authority arian system than a particle amary one but he hasn't tomed us yet what his plans are. >> schifrin: though he has denied it was a coup this afternoon. >> yes. >> schifrin: let's take a little step ba

from washington, d.c., sarah yerkes, a senior fellow in carnegie's middle east program . from bursa in turkey, sally yassen, a fellow at the ostrom workshop at the indiana university bloomington. a warm welcome to you all sarah -- a warm welcome to all of you. sarah, if i can begin with you, you were tweeting earlier what to watch out for as this pans out if the president grabs more power we're looking at a coup we should keep an eye on the reaction of the security forces should keep an eye on other arab states. is this not really though just a coup in slow motion? sarah: it looks like a coup. i think if you read the constitution that the president is using to justify his actions it very clearly states that he needs to consult the prime minister and the speaker of parliament before taking these emergency actions, which he did not do. so i think it's very hard for him to say that this is not a coup and i think you know we're still these things are still unfolding we need to keep watching what else he does, if he does put a new government in power very quickly, then maybe we