- Kais Saied’s re-election likely amid low voter turnout
- Tunisia faces democratic decline post-Arab Spring
- Human rights abuses, economic crisis fuel unrest
Tunisia will hold a presidential election on Sunday amid a crackdown on dissent and human rights violations against undocumented migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.
The incumbent, Kais Saied, whose most notable critics are in prison, is anticipated to win easily following a campaign with few rallies and public discussions. This is a huge setback for a country that has long prided itself on being the home of the 2011 Arab Spring protests.
Only 11% of the 9 million electorate voted in the December municipal elections. Similarly, low voter turnout this weekend would indicate displeasure of Saied’s leadership thus far.
Observers claim Saied, who has been in office since 2019, has increasingly used the country’s institutions to his advantage.
Last year, he ordered a crackdown on illegal black migrants, which garnered international outrage, but the EU still went ahead with a €105 million contract with Tunisia to prevent irregular migration.
The agreement has helped support security forces that have been committing rampant sexual violence against women on migratory routes in its territory.
In the run-up to the election, the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) reduced an initial longlist of 17 presidential candidates to three after a slew of disputed disqualifications. Former legislator Ayachi Zammel was arrested this week for allegedly fabricating records. It is uncertain whether his candidacy is legal despite his arrest.
Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Bassam Khawaja, stated, “Since the start of the electoral period on 14 July, authorities have prosecuted, convicted, or detained at least nine prospective candidates.”
Late in September, Tunisia’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to deprive the courts of the authority to overturn electoral judgments. The poll came after a dispute between the ISIE and a court rejected the former’s disqualification of three presidential candidates.
The most recent development has made Saied, who will govern for another five years if elected on Sunday, nearly unstoppable.
Sarah Yerkes, a senior scholar in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the election will “almost certainly be a low point in the trajectory of what was once the sole democracy in the Arab world.
Tunisia was heralded as one of the region’s brightest democratic lights after the Arab Spring demonstrations overthrew longtime ruler Ben Ali in 2011, a reputation bolstered by back-to-back election results.
Saied ran as an independent candidate and establishment outsider in the previous election in 2019, campaigning on a platform of strong administration following nearly a decade of gridlock between Islamist and secular blocs since the 2011 revolution. The political outsider won by a landslide, receiving 73% of the vote in a second-round runoff with a turnout of 58%.
In 2021, he suspended the opposition-controlled parliament and removed the prime minister. The next year, a referendum amended the constitution, giving Saied broad powers under a newly established unitary system of government. He gave himself the authority to appoint magistrates and the seven ISIE members by presidential decree and to fire them at any time.
More than a dozen leaders of Ennahda, the main opposition group, were detained, including former MP Said Ferjani, who Ali also imprisoned. Many people remain in captivity.
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Khawaja clarified: “Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections.”
Saied’s pursuit of an authoritarian agenda has coincided with a decline in Tunisia’s economic fortunes. Unemployment has increased, and inflation is in double digits. The World Bank reports that the country’s economic recovery from years of a cost-of-living problem and a recession in 2023 has faltered.
Throughout his term, Saied has accused civil society and opposition groups critical of his leadership of having ulterior motivations and acting as puppets for other governments. That sentiment was repeated by parliamentarians in September when some, even outside the ruling party, accused judges of acting on behalf of unidentified foreign interests.
With the coast clear for his re-election, there are concerns about further democratic backsliding and populist propaganda attempts in the coming years.
Yerkes commented: “By manipulating the 2024 presidential election, Saied has put one more nail in the coffin of Tunisia’s democratic transition and ensured the outcome well before the process began.
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