Voting has begun in the Tunisian presidential election as the president, Kais Saied, seeks a second term, while his most prominent critics are in prison and after his main rival was jailed suddenly last month.
The election, expected to be won by Saied, is being seen by observers as a closing chapter in Tunisia’s experiment with democracy.
The north African country had for a decade prided itself for being the birthplace of the pro-democracy movement after the 2011 Arab spring uprisings against dictatorship. It had been hailed for introducing a competitive, though flawed, democracy after decades of autocratic rule.
Observers and rights groups now say Saied, 66, who has been president since 2019, has undone many of Tunisia’s democratic gains while removing institutional and legal checks on his power. In 2021, he seized most powers when he dissolved the elected parliament and rewrote the constitution, a move the opposition described as a coup.
Before polling day, there were no campaign rallies or public debates, and nearly all of the campaign posters in city streets have been Saied’s. Senior figures from the biggest parties, which largely oppose Saied, have been imprisoned on various charges over the past year and those parties have not publicly backed any of the three candidates on Sunday’s ballot. Other opponents have been barred from running.
Saied, who has said he is fighting a corrupt elite and traitors and will not be a dictator, is facing two rivals. The first is his former ally turned critic, the Chaab party leader, Zouhair Maghzaoui. Second is Ayachi Zammel, a businessman who had been seen as posing a big threat to Saied until he was jailed last month. Zammel currently faces more than 14 years in prison on accusations of having forged endorsement signatures to enable him to stand in the election.
With little hope for change in a country mired in economic crisis, the mood among much of the electorate has been one of resignation. “We have nothing to do with politics,” Mohamed, a 22-year-old who gave only his first name for fear of retribution, told Agence France-Presse in the capital. Neither he nor his friends planned to vote, he said, because they believed it was “useless”.
Wael, a bank employee in Tunis, told Reuters: “The scene is shameful. Journalists and opponents in prison, including one presidential candidate. But I will vote for change.”
Polls close at 6pm on Sunday and results are expected in the next two days.
Political tensions have risen since an electoral commission named by Saied disqualified three prominent candidates last month, amid protests by opposition and civil society groups. Last week, lawmakers loyal to Saied then approved a law stripping the administrative court of authority over election disputes. This court is widely seen as the country’s last independent judicial body, after Saied dissolved the supreme judicial council and dismissed dozens of judges in 2022.
Saied said last year that the arrival thousands of illegal migrants from sub-Saharan African countries was a “conspiracy to change the country’s demographic makeup,” prompting the African Union to condemn what it called Tunisia’s “hate speech” against migrants. There were physical attacks, evictions and raids on the homes of black immigrants in Tunisia.
Amid a growing crackdown on dissent, a number of Saied’s critics across the political spectrum have been jailed, sparking condemnation at home and abroad. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has said that more than “170 people are detained in Tunisia on political grounds or for exercising their fundamental rights”.
Jailed opposition figures include Rached Ghannouchi, 83, the Tunisian moderate Islamist leader and founder of the Ennahda party, which dominated political life after the revolution. Ghannouchi, a former parliamentary speaker, is the most prominent critic of Saied.
Tunisia’s electoral board said about 9.7 million people are expected to turn out to vote on Sunday, but the near certainty of a Saied win and the country’s mounting hardships have inspired little to no eagerness to vote.
The International Crisis Group thinktank said on Friday that “the president’s nationalist discourse and economic hardship” have “corroded any enthusiasm ordinary citizens might have felt about the election”. “Many fear that a new mandate for Saied will only deepen the country’s socioeconomic woes, as well as hasten the regime’s authoritarian drift,” it said.
Hundreds of people protested in the capital on Friday, marching along a heavily policed Habib Bourguiba Avenue as some demonstrators bore signs denouncing Saied as a “Pharaoh manipulating the law”.
In a speech on Thursday, Saied had called for a “massive turnout to vote” and usher in what he called an era of “reconstruction”. He cited “a long war against conspiratorial forces linked to foreign circles”, accusing them of “infiltrating many public services and disrupting hundreds of projects” under his tenure.
Salem Lahmar, a fruit seller, told Reuters: “Saied is the first president who fought corrupt politicians and influential businessmen, so we will elect him and renew our support for him.”
The International Crisis Group said that while Saied had support among working-class people, who have been struggling with an economic crisis, he had been criticised for failing to resolve the country’s deep economic problems.
European countries concerned over migration have given financial help to Tunisia after country replaced Libya as the region’s main departure point to Europe for people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East, many travelling by boat. But Tunisia’s state finances appear to remain highly strained despite tourism revenues rising. Periodic shortages of subsidised goods, as well as outages of power and water, continue.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
