Tunisia’s 6 October presidential election did what it was designed to do: prolong autocratic incumbent Kais Saied’s stay in power. Saied beat the two candidates allowed to stand against him – one a supporter, the other an opponent in jail – to take over 90 per cent of the vote. But with an extremely low turnout of under 29 per cent, Saied’s win hardly constitutes an endorsement. It’s clear most people expressed their dissatisfaction by staying home.
It’s quite different from the 2019 election that brought Saied to power. Then, the field consisted of a staggering 26 candidates, and when Saied prevailed in the run-off, it was on a turnout of over 55 per cent. But since then, Saied has dismantled democratic checks and balances and greatly expanded his power. He can be expected to interpret the result as a mandate to further supress freedoms.
Saied’s crackdown
It started in July 2021, when Saied dismissed the prime minister and suspended parliament. Two months later, he gave himself the power to rule by decree . He stripped members of parliament of their immunity, and numerous politicians have since been criminalised and jailed, along with people who’ve condemned his actions on social media.
Saied then introduced a new constitution , rubber stamped in a low-turnout referendum in July 2022, that gave the president near-absolute power. By then, he’d replaced the Supreme Judicial Council with a body of his own choosing and sacked many judges. He appointed a new electoral authority under his direct control. The new constitution also gave him control of the army.
Ahead of the December 2022 parliamentary election, Saied changed the electoral system from one where political parties put up lists to one where people run as individual candidates, further diluting the power of parties, which he also banned from campaigning. Amid an opposition boycott and on a shockingly low turnout of just over 11 per cent, the election produced a parliament overwhelmingly made up of Saied supporters.
The authorities followed up with another wave of arrests , including of civil society activists, critical journalists and lawyers, using vaguely worded and broad laws on cybercrime, security and terrorism. Compliant courts quickly handed down sentences. It's believed there are currently over 170 prisoners who’ve been jailed for their politics or for exercising their fundamental civil rights. In addition, security forces have violently repressed protests against Saied’s power grab.
The authorities are now investigating many civil society organisations (CSOs) and have frozen the funds of some. A new law on CSOs is threatened, which would increase state interference in organisations and allow it to restrict their funding.
Populism in full flow
The 2011 Jasmine Revolution, which launched Tunisia’s now largely extinguished democratic experiment, was motivated by economic as well as political concerns. While people and civil society groups initially worked to defend democracy as the country threatened to spin into violent unrest – resulting in the four CSOs of the Tunisia National Dialogue Quartet being awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize – by the time of Saied’s 2021 coup, widespread public frustration with dysfunctional politics, corruption and persistent economic malaise had set in.
Saied exploits this. He has continually used populist rhetoric to justify his actions, positioning himself on the side of ‘the people’ against what he calls as a corrupt elite, and claiming to be the true defender of the revolution even as he reverses its achievements. Among people fed up with politics and economically desperate, Saied’s populist posturing has won some popularity. But his problem is that, despite centralising power and curbing democratic freedoms, he hasn’t managed to deliver economic progress.
Given this, he’s resorted to classic divide-and-rule politics by demonising migrants and refugees and, by extension, Black Africans living in Tunisia. Tunisia is home to an estimated 17,000 asylum seekers and refugees, most of them fleeing the deadly civil war in Sudan. Saied has blamed migrants for crime and violence and spread conspiracy theories about migration being a plot to undermine the country. In July 2023, the government rounded up hundreds of people and dumped them in unsafe conditions at Tunisia’s borders. Saied’s divisive populist rhetoric has fuelled violence as people have taken the law into their own hands.
The government has followed up its racism by criminalising civil society groups that campaign for the rights of migrants and Black Africans. Saied has led the vilification, calling leaders of organisations that work with migrants ‘traitors’ and ‘mercenaries’ and claiming they’re receiving foreign funding to help migrants settle in Tunisia. This is part of a tactic populists typically use, of equating criticism with foreign-backed subversion: Saied has accused those who’ve criticised his campaign of arrests of foreign interference and smeared political opponents as ‘non-patriots’.
Competition eliminated
There was no hope of a let up ahead of the election. Major political parties that once competed didn’t field candidates; those they might have put forward are currently in jail. Instead, they called for a boycott. Several critics of Saied who wanted to run were quickly criminalised and handed prison sentences. This stopped them running, since candidates can’t have a criminal record. All in all, the number of people disqualified ahead of the vote ran into double figures. The sole opposition candidate, Ayachi Zammel, only stayed on the ballot because he was sentenced after this candidacy was approved. He received his third sentence of the campaign, 12 years in jail, just days before the vote and faces further charges.
The authorities denied accreditation to many CSOs that had previously played a vital role in election monitoring on the grounds that they receive foreign funding, making this the election with the lowest number of observers since the revolution.
In the run-up to the vote, the Saied-controlled electoral authority reported social media pages for potential prosecution and issued warnings to several radio stations. And then, in the week before the election, Saied’s puppet parliament passed a law removing the jurisdiction of Tunisia’s administrative court over the electoral authority. The move came after the court ordered it to reinstate three candidates it had disqualified; the electoral authority simply ignored the ruling, and politicians then accused the court of being influenced by foreign interests.
It all made for an election with minimal campaigning, with few public events of any kind, hardly any campaign posters other than Saied’s and a complete lack of the debate and dialogue that’s a vital part of democracy.
Pressure needed
Pre-election protests organised by a new coalition of civil society groups and political parties made it clear not everyone is behind Saied. But emboldened by his stage-managed win and his second five-year term, Saied can be expected to make it even harder for people to come together, organise and speak out. His populism must ultimately fail, particularly given economic strife, but Tunisia is likely to grow even more repressive before change comes.
Around the world – including in neighbouring Algeria, which saw a similarly hollow election ritual in September – it’s sadly nothing new for incumbents to dictate every aspect of the votes that confirm their continuing power. But that it’s happened in Tunisia – given the post-revolutionary sacrifices made in defence of democracy and the value its example held across the region – carries extra symbolic weight. Yet the international community has so far done too little.
The European Union’s (EU) response has largely been to hand Saied money in return for promises of tighter controls on the many fleeing the failing economy for a better life in Europe. It’s now clear that Tunisian security forces are using the funds to commit widespread human rights abuses . The EU and states with warm relations with Tunisia should demand more as Saied enters his second term. They should urge respect for fundamental human rights and civic freedoms and call for the restoration of checks and balances to set limits on Saied’s autocratic power.
*CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report .
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