President Saied’s Main Rival Still In Jail As Voting Begins In Tunisian Election

Voting began in the Tunisian presidential election on Sunday as President Kais Saied is seeking a second term in office, with his main rival suddenly jailed last month and most opponents imprisoned or barred from running.

Saied is facing two other candidates, his former ally turned critic, Chaab Party leader Zouhair Maghzaoui, and Ayachi Zammel, who continued to gain popularity and was seen as the main rival, until he was jailed last month after being accused of forgery.

Tunisia had for a decade prided itself for being the birthplace of the pro-democracy movement after the 2011 Arab spring uprisings against dictatorship, after introducing a competitive, though flawed, democracy after decades of autocratic rule.

However, rights groups now say Saied, in power since 2019, has undone many of those democratic gains while removing institutional and legal checks on his power.

Saied, 66, has rejected criticism of his actions, saying he is fighting a corrupt elite and traitors, and that he will not be a dictator. In 2021, he seized most powers when he dissolved the elected parliament and rewrote the constitution, a move the opposition described as a coup.

The level of dictatorship displayed by Saied was more evident, with the President, barring campaign rallies or public debates, and ensuring that the city streets carried mainly his campaign posters.

In over a year, Saied has jailed some senior figures from opposition parties, while some possible opponents have been barred from running.

About 10 million Tunisians are eligible to vote in the election, however, a percentage are expected to boycott the election.

“We have nothing to do with politics,” Mohamed, a 22-year-old who gave only his first name for fear of retribution, told Agence France-Presse in the capital. Neither he nor his friends planned to vote, he said, because they believed it was “useless”.

Polls close at 6pm on Sunday and results are expected in the next two days.

The International Crisis Group think tank said on Friday that “the president’s nationalist discourse and economic hardship” have “corroded any enthusiasm ordinary citizens might have felt about the election”. “Many fear that a new mandate for Saied will only deepen the country’s socio economic woes, as well as hasten the regime’s authoritarian drift,” it said.

Saied’s actions led to a massive protest by Hundreds of people in the capital on Friday, as they marched along a heavily policed Habib Bourguiba Avenue with some demonstrators bearing signs denouncing Saied as a “Pharaoh manipulating the law”.