Tunisia’s President Saied wins reelection after cracking down on the opposition

TUNIS, Tunisia — President Kais Saied gained a landslide victory in Tunisia’s election Monday, conserving his grip on energy after a primary time period wherein opponents have been imprisoned and the nation’s establishments overhauled to offer him extra authority.

The North African nation’s Unbiased Excessive Authority for Elections stated Saied acquired 90.7% of the vote, a day after exit polls confirmed him with an insurmountable lead within the nation generally known as the birthplace of the Arab Spring greater than a decade in the past.

“We’re going to cleanse the country of all the corrupt and schemers,” the 66-year-old populist stated in a speech at marketing campaign headquarters. He pledged to defend Tunisia in opposition to threats international and home.

That raised alarm among the many president’s critics together with College of Tunis legislation professor Sghayer Zakraoui, who stated Tunisian politics have been as soon as once more about “the absolute power of a single man who places himself above everyone else and believes himself to be invested with a messianic message.”

Zakraoui stated the election outcomes have been paying homage to Tunisia underneath President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who dominated for greater than 20 years earlier than turning into the primary dictator toppled within the Arab Spring uprisings. Saied acquired a bigger vote share than Ben Ali did in 2009, two years earlier than fleeing the nation amid protests.

The closest challenger, businessman Ayachi Zammel, gained 7.4% of the vote after sitting in jail for almost all of the marketing campaign whereas dealing with a number of sentences for election-related crimes.

But Saied’s win was marred by low voter turnout. Election officers reported 28.8% of voters participated on Oct. 6 — a considerably smaller exhibiting than within the first spherical of the nation’s two different post-Arab Spring elections and a sign of apathy plaguing the nation’s 9.7 million eligible voters.

Saied’s most outstanding challengers — imprisoned since final 12 months — have been prevented from operating, and lesser-known candidates have been jailed or saved off the poll. Opposition events boycotted the competition, calling it a sham amid Tunisia’s deteriorating political local weather and authoritarian drift.

Over the weekend, there was little signal of an election underway in Tunisia aside from an anti-Saied protest on Friday and celebrations within the capital on Sunday night.

“He will re-enter office undermined rather than empowered by these elections,” Tarek Megerisi, a senior coverage fellow on the European Council on International Relations, wrote on X.

Saied’s critics pledged to maintain opposing his rule.

“It’s possible that after 20 years our kids will protest on Avenue Habib Bourguiba to tell him to get out,” stated Amri Sofien, a contract filmmaker, referring to the capital’s important thoroughfare. “There is no hope in this country.”

Such despair is a far cry from the Tunisia of 2011, when protesters took to the streets demanding “bread, freedom and dignity,” ousted the president and paved the way in which for the nation’s transition right into a multiparty democracy.

Tunisia within the following years enshrined a brand new structure, created a Fact and Dignity Fee to convey justice to residents tortured underneath the previous regime and noticed its main civil society teams win the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering political compromise.

However its new leaders have been unable to buoy the nation’s flailing economic system and shortly grew to become unpopular amid fixed political infighting and episodes of terrorism and political violence.

Towards that backdrop, Saied — then a political outsider — gained his first time period in 2019 promising to fight corruption. To the satisfaction of his supporters, in 2021 he declared a state of emergency, suspended parliament and rewrote the structure to consolidate the facility of the presidency — a sequence of actions his critics likened to a coup.

Tunisians in a referendum permitted the president’s proposed structure a 12 months later, though voter turnout plummeted.

Authorities subsequently started to unleash a wave of repression on the once-vibrant civil society. In 2023, a few of Saied’s most outstanding opponents from throughout the political spectrum have been thrown in jail, together with right-wing chief Abir Moussi and Islamist Rached Ghannouchi, the co-founder of the get together Ennahda and former speaker of Tunisia’s parliament.

Dozens of others have been imprisoned on expenses together with inciting dysfunction, undermining state safety and violating a controversial anti-fake information legislation critics say has been used to stifle dissent.

The tempo of the arrests picked up earlier this 12 months, when authorities started concentrating on extra attorneys, journalists, activists, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the previous head of the post-Arab Spring Fact and Dignity Fee.

“The authorities seemed to see subversion everywhere,” stated Michael Ayari, senior analyst for Algeria & Tunisia on the Worldwide Disaster Group.

Dozens of candidates had expressed curiosity in difficult the president, and 17 submitted preliminary paperwork to run in Sunday’s race. Nonetheless, members of the election fee permitted solely three.

The position of the fee and its members, all of them appointed by the president underneath his new structure, got here underneath scrutiny. They defied courtroom rulings ordering them to reinstate three candidates they’d rejected. The parliament subsequently handed a legislation stripping energy from the executive courts.

Such strikes sparked worldwide concern, together with from Europe, which depends on partnership with Tunisia to police the central Mediterranean, the place migrants try to cross in from North Africa to Europe.

European Fee International Affairs spokeswoman Nabila Massrali stated Monday the EU “takes note of the position expressed by many Tunisian social and political actors regarding the integrity of the electoral process.”