(Tunis) Three candidates, including the outgoing president Kais Saied, have been selected to run in the presidential election in Tunisia on October 6, a vote which appears to be “a foregone conclusion”, according to experts and contenders who have given up in the face of “obstacles”.
Aside from Mr. Saied, 66, who is seeking a second term, the electoral authority Isie announced that it had accepted the files of two other candidates: Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, a former MP who defends pan-Arabism, and Ayachi Zammel, also a former MP, head of a small, little-known party.
For the other 14 eliminated candidates – who can still file appeals – the president of Isie Farouk Bouasker assured that they had “not collected enough sponsorships”.
The path to the presidential election has been fraught with pitfalls for Mr Saied’s rivals, experts say. The latter, democratically elected in 2019, seized all powers in a coup on July 25, 2021, and has since been accused of authoritarianism by the opposition and his detractors.
Candidates had to obtain the sponsorship of ten parliamentarians, 40 local elected officials or 10,000 voters at a rate of at least 500 per constituency, an enormous figure according to several experts. The Isie also required a criminal record extract (B3), proving the absence of convictions.
Several candidates have complained of administrative obstacles in obtaining sponsorship forms and the B3. Mr. Bouasker assured that “no application has been refused because of the B3.” In addition, a number of potential candidates, including party leaders such as Issam Chebbi and Ghazi Chaouachi, are imprisoned on charges of conspiracy against the state.
They are part of a group of around twenty opponents, businessmen and former ministers, arrested in February 2023 for plotting against state security, an investigation denounced as “a witch hunt” by Amnesty International.
After assuming full powers three years ago, Mr. Saied revised the Constitution to replace the current parliamentary regime with an ultra-presidentialist system in which Parliament has virtually no power, and, according to his opponents, dismantled most of the counterbalancing institutions established since the advent of democracy and the fall of the Ben Ali dictatorship in 2011.
“This is a foregone conclusion,” Tunisian analyst Hatem Nafti told AFP, noting that Maghzaoui had supported Saied’s coup three years ago. Although he is “a little better known” than Zammel, Nafti said, he is considered “an internal opponent who is especially critical of the lack of socio-economic results” and the presidential record.
“He has no chance, because people always prefer the original to the copy,” the analyst added.
The other candidate, Mr Zammel, “is not very well known”, according to Mr Nafti, who believes that “the question of the election was settled in advance by eliminating all the competitors who had a chance”.
Among the serious candidates who were rejected, experts and media regularly cited the name of Mondher Zenaïdi, a former minister of the Ben Ali regime, recognized for his skills, behind whom the opposition could perhaps have united, says Mr. Nafti.
“Formality”
The candidacy of opposition figure Abir Moussi, head of the Free Destourian Party (PDL) which claims to be descended from autocrats Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was also rejected.me Moussi has been in detention since October, notably on charges of plotting against the state.
Retired admiral and former national security adviser Kamel Akrout, who withdrew his candidacy at the last minute, denounced a “lack of equal opportunities and obstacles aimed at excluding candidates in favor of one.”
The October 6 vote “will be a mere formality that will serve no purpose other than to lend imaginary legitimacy to political failure, unprecedented economic collapse, extreme poverty and diplomatic isolation,” he said.
On Friday, political activist and writer Safi Said, also considered a serious competitor to Mr Saied, threw in the towel after failing to collect enough signatures.
He denounced “a lack of clarity in the rules of the game”, believing that he had “almost participated in a ‘one man show'” by Mr. Saied.