Tunisia presidential candidates demand army ensure ‘fairness, neutrality’ of electoral process

Tunisian presidential candidates have demanded the army ensure that ballot boxes are “not tampered with” during the presidential elections scheduled for 6 October.

Eleven candidates, including Imad Daimi, Abdel Latif Mekki and Safi Saeed, on Wednesday denounced the arbitrary harassment and security intimidation practised against many activists involved in endorsement campaigns. They highlighted that some people had been arrested and items seized.

The candidates held the interior minister and the secretary of state for security responsible for this “departure from neutrality”, and demanded they release the detainees and return the confiscated items.

They also held the Election Commission responsible for “complicating the election procedures and conditions, in violation of the applicable texts and the electoral law.”

The candidates called on the Tunisian media to play its role in informing and discussing electoral programmes and organising debates between candidates in an atmosphere of objectivity, fairness and equal opportunities, and urged state media to open up and provide an atmosphere of freedom, independence and equality.

The Administrative Court, they added, must “play its historic role in light of the deliberate absence of the Constitutional Court, in order to avoid any unilateral interpretations of the Constitution and the laws in force in a manner that may be in line with the desires of some to exclude most serious candidates in favour of a specific candidate.”

In 2021, President Kais Saied announced exceptional measures, suspending the 2014 constitution before drafting a new one, which did not gain significant support from a large segment of Tunisians. Critics fear his actions are allowing him to consolidate power and reverse the progress made following the country’s ‘Jasmine Revolution’.

Read: Tunisia president denounces 2014 constitution as a ‘Zionist plot’