Tunisian voters seem to have largely turned their backs on the re-election of Kais Said, 66, in this Sunday’s presidential elections, in which 72% of those registered abstained. They are the same citizens who in 2011 inaugurated the riots of the arab spring by expelling the dictator Zin el Abidín Ben Ali from power and then went to the polls in the first democratic elections (with an abstention of 37% in 2014) since the independence of Tunisia, in 1956. Now they have become disinterested in a vote in the that the main opposition candidates are in jail or have had their candidacy vetoed.
Elected in the second round in 2019 with a participation of 57%, the independent jurist Said was received with the hope of putting an end to political and economic misrule in the midst of a startling transition in the Maghreb country. But in 2021 he dissolved Parliament, in a self-coup denounced by the majority of the parties, and a year later he reformed the Constitution to concentrate the key powers of the State in his hand.
The calls to the polls organized since then in Tunisia have revealed the distancing of voters from the president’s initiatives. The referendum to review the Constitution was ignored by 70% of those registered on the electoral roll and the legislative elections called to have a chamber aligned with Said’s political regime recorded an abstention of almost 90% in 2023.
Despite citizen apathy and the slogan of boycotting the presidential elections launched by several parties, his reelection seems assured, but with a participation in the first round of 27.7% of the census that calls into question his legitimacy. In addition, the new Parliament controlled by Said approved nine days before the vote an express reform of the electoral law to deprive the only court that had acted independently of the appeals of opposition candidates of the mission of supervising the elections.
Since last August, three of the main candidates were removed from the race for the presidency by the so-called Independent Higher Instance for Elections (ISIE), a central electoral board hand-picked by Said. The Administrative Court, which had just been stripped of its arbitration powers in the electoral campaigns, ruled in favor of their appeal, but the ISIE settled the issue with the definitive exclusion of the three. The same central electoral board of presidential appointment has vetoed the presence of local and international observers and several foreign media outlets, including Morning Express.
Last Tuesday, the Tunisian justice system sentenced the liberal deputy Ayachi Zamel to 12 years in prison for irregularities in the presentation of endorsements, who had just been ratified by the electoral board as one of the two candidates who were going to be able to stand up to Said at the polls. On Thursday, another court sentenced him to 18 more months of confinement in prison, in what was his third sentence during the campaign in several proceedings opened against him.
Several opposition parties have given the order to concentrate the vote on Zamel, who continues in the electoral race from a cell, with the aim of forcing a second round if the president fails to be re-elected in the first with more than 50% of the votes. suffrages. The Islamist movement Ennahda — the largest force in Parliament, dissolved three years ago and banned by the regime in 2023 — has given its members freedom to vote.
The other candidate who managed to pass the ISIE screen, Zuhair Magzahui, leader of a minority pan-Arabist force and former ally of Said, has remained practically on the sidelines of the electoral contest while the central board closely monitored that his campaign expenses did not exceed the 45,000 euros. Violation of this legal limit is punishable by imprisonment in Tunisia.
First outbreak of the ‘Arab Spring’
The third presidential elections held in Tunisia after the first outbreak of the arab spring They have had a lower turnout of voters than the first two. At 1:00 p.m. (one hour more in mainland Spain) 14% of those registered had voted, according to the ISIE, which did not plan to provide new data immediately after the closing of the polling stations, five hours later. During the morning, participation in the presidential elections seemed to be higher than in the 2023 legislative elections, as confirmed by the Efe agency in voting centers in the Tunisian capital.
More than 170 people are detained in Tunisia for their political activity, of which 110 are related to Ennahda, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. “The authorities have arrested or excluded opposition candidates from elections, and have taken arbitrary measures against civil society organizations and independent media,” warns the New York-based NGO. The erosion of civil liberties has extended to parties and social organizations.
Among the detained leaders, Rachid Ganuchi, 82, former president of the Legislature and Ennahda leader, stands out. He was sentenced to three years in prison last February. Another opposition leader, the social democrat Jayam Turki, has remained behind bars since February last year, despite the fact that legislation prohibits his provisional detention from being prolonged for more than 14 months. Turki, 59, is the son of a Spanish Republican exile in Tunisia and has a Spanish passport. Anti-terrorist legislation applies to him, accused of conspiring against the State for having organized meetings with European diplomats.
Economic and migration crisis
The social crisis and the impoverishment of citizens is the main weak point of Said’s first term, which has had to confront the powerful Union of Tunisian Workers, which has one million members, in a country of 11 million inhabitants. . The union center has directly opposed the economic rescue plan imposed by the International Monetary Fund to save the Maghreb country from bankruptcy.
A year ago, President Said dealt a blow to the negotiation table of the migration agreement with the European Union, key to stopping the arrival of small boats in the central Mediterranean, by rejecting as “derisory” the financial aid of 127 million euros announced by Brussels, compared to the promised 1 billion. Said’s slam of the door threatened to undermine a “strategic partnership” pact to control irregular immigration that the European Commission intends to use as a model for other North African states. In essence, Brussels provides financial aid to block the departure of migrants to the EU. The agreement finally came in response to the arrival of 70,000 people in Italy. Tunisia was the origin of 62% of those who landed in its territory. Europe has promised million-dollar investments in return.