Tunisia elections 2024: Either Kais Saied or no one

Either in prison or on their way to prison … This is the situation faced by almost every serious candidate for the presidential elections in Tunisia scheduled for 6 October.

What some feared or expected has now become a reality for everyone: the current President Kais Saied is not at all willing to engage in an honourable and fair competition to gain the people’s trust for the next five years. For the sake of achieving this, he is sparing no means to exclude everyone, so that almost no one remains in the race except for him, including the state’s capabilities. The first means he has used is the complete subjugation of the judiciary and its rulings and dominating the electoral commission, which has practically turned into a cell to implement what he wants.

We are no longer faced with serious candidates as they are behind bars, involved in fabricated cases that have not even respected the most basic legal procedures, including those that are a formality, even before they enter the electoral race. Today, we have reached the point of punishing everyone who has dared to run, so it was necessary to rush to fabricate cases against them that prevent them from participating, even if it involves raising issues that date back several years and, even worse, some are sentenced to never participating in any elections for the rest of their life.

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Anyone who was not thrown in prison or against whom attempts to drag them to prison failed, faced impossible administrative complications that excluded them from the elections, as all the circumstances pushed in one direction, i.e., nomination and candidacy is only allowed for one person: Kais Saied. He employed the entire state and its apparatuses to serve this goal.

Tunisians found no other outlet to oppose all of this other than a wide campaign of mockery on social media, despite all the risks and warnings, because the attempts to exclude almost all candidates and leave Kais Saied to run the track alone reached a level of absurdity that exposed him after lacking the minimum level of seriousness and status, both in form and content. This was in a manner that only occurs in the worst and most trivial dictatorships in the world.

The disaster lies in the fact that all of this is happening while Kais Saied continues to repeat the same statements tirelessly, considering everything around him a conspiracy plotted by “traitors, agents and those who throw themselves into the arms of foreign powers and Zionist circles” and that, under his leadership, Tunisia is in a “battle of national liberation”, but no one knows against whom or how. Amid all of this, the man is still cloaking himself under the phrase “the people want” although he has not given a single opportunity for anyone to know what the people really want. If he really believed in their free will, he would have let them express it at the ballot boxes to win their trust through free and credible elections, far from the farcical and even immature practices that we have seen.

These people, who Saied monopolises by speaking on their behalf, are now suffering in their daily lives as they have never suffered before, not only from the exorbitant prices that have exhausted everyone but also from the deterioration of services such as lack of water, electricity outages and the absence of basic goods from the market, not to mention the stifling of freedoms that have thrown all opponents and five journalists into prisons. This is in addition to many citizens who have been arrested, tried and imprisoned because of posts and opinions on social media.

These people are the same people that Saied refuses to talk to without using the language of intimidation, treason, rebuke and obsession with everything. They are the same people who he refuses to sit with in any local media outlet to be frank with them about the country’s real problems and his visions for solutions, and to reassure large groups of the population who are fed up with everything and have no dream, other than to leave this country, even if the sea swallows them up. Even this option has almost been eliminated through agreements to combat irregular migration that turned Tunisia into Europe’s border guard in exchange for meagre and humiliating aid.

Saied has the right to aspire to a second presidential term, but what results can he boast about and present to this people?! Almost nothing: neither politically nor developmentally nor socially. In fact, the exact opposite is happening. In an accurate survey conducted by the Tunisian organisation, I Watch, concerned with transparency and good governance, operating since 2015, regarding the performance of all presidents of the republic and all successive heads of government, it became clear that only 9 of the 72 promises that Saied made were fulfilled. This means that the percentage of his failure to implement his promises to his people is estimated at 87.5 per cent!

The most dangerous issue of all is the problem of legitimacy, as a presidential election that does not meet the conditions of a fair competition is a flawed election from the start and, therefore, most of the major political and civil parties and forces may consider it illegitimate, especially if the turnout is low. Therefore, the president that emerges will become illegitimate in their eyes, and this may lead the country into a phase that is worse than before and with a more tarnished international reputation, because almost no one has overthrown Saied’s legitimacy, even after his coup against the Constitution and his unilateral change of the entire political and institutional scene in the country, but if we reach this point, then that is another matter.

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This article appeared in Arabic in Al-Quds on 6 August, 2024.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.