From the main avenue Habib Bourguiba in the Tunisian capital, images of victory come. Amid the cheers of President Kais Saied and the constant flying of Tunisian flags, hundreds of people chanted: “The people want to build and develop.” Supporters of the current president preempted the official results after an exit poll once again named Saied as the winner. However, this is not a representative image of the North African country.
72% of registered nationals abstained and did not participate in the presidential elections, according to data provided by the High Independent Electoral Authority of Tunisia (ISIE). The participation rate, far from the citizen mobilization figures after the fall of dictator Zin el Abidín Ben Ali, adds to the social unrest of recent years. Around 70% of those registered did not vote in the referendum on the revision of the Constitution and almost 90% refused to participate in the 2023 legislative elections.
The presidential race was marked by Saied’s becoming authoritarian and the cancellation of other candidacies. A week before the elections, Parliament, controlled by Saied, approved a reform of the electoral law in which it reduced the powers of the courts over decisions made by a troubled electoral authority, hand-picked by Saied himself. In August, three candidates, in addition to the 14 already excluded, were excluded from the presidential race.
During election day on October 6, only three men filled out the ballots. Among them, one of them, Ayachi Zammel, leader of the opposition party Azimoun, is incarcerated. Less than a week before the election, Zammel was sentenced to 12 years in prison for falsifying documents and violating sponsorship rules to run for office.
Iron fist, xenophobia and human rights
“With the approval of decree number 54, there was a paralysis of the opposition. The imprisonment of journalists, bloggers and people linked to important social movements began. At the moment, in Tunisia, there is an atmosphere of fear,” explains Bosco Govantes, professor of political science at the Pablo de Olavide University, to elDiario.es. With the approval of the new regulations in September 2022, Kais Saied gave free rein to the arrest and imprisonment of any citizen who spreads false information against the state through his social networks.
“Judicial persecution and harassment have reached the leaders of political parties like Ennahda or the Free Constitutional Party of Abir Moussi,” underlines Miguel Hernando de Larramendi, professor at the University of Castilla La Mancha and expert on the subject, during conversations with this middle region. According to the 2023 Democratic Index published by The Economist Intelligence Unit, Tunisia ranks 82nd out of 167.
Added to political repression is anti-immigration discourse tinged with xenophobia. In February 2023, Tunisian authorities arrested at least 850 people of sub-Saharan origin. A year later, in May 2024, the authorities launched a crackdown campaign against NGOs, activists or public officials involved in actions related to assistance to sub-Saharan refugees or migrants.
Govantes explains that in Tunisia, Saied developed “a discourse of invasion of sub-Saharan migrants very similar to the discourse of the far right in Europe”. The leader has repeatedly declared that migratory flows from south of the Sahara constitute a “problem and a threat to the country’s Arab identity”.
Despite repeated human rights violations and lack of freedom of expression, Saied strengthened his relations with the European Union and, above all, with the government of Georgia Meloni in Italy. “Kais Saied took advantage of the legitimacy given to him by his large electoral victory in 2019 to present himself as an interlocutor for the European Union,” explains Hernando de Larramendi. “Although his speeches emphasize the defense of Tunisian sovereignty, in practice the agreements with the EU and especially with Italy reflect the transactional nature of the agreements with which the Tunisian president has succeeded in limiting the scope of European criticism of the process of regression of freedoms in the country,” adds the professor.
In July 2023, the President of the Italian Council of Ministers, Georgia Meloni, the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, and the former Dutch Prime Minister and current NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, launched a “ strategic and global alliance” of President Saied in Tunisia.
This is aid of 1 billion euros conditional on the ratification by Tunisia of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, of which 105 million were allocated to border management to prevent the arrival of migrants in European waters.
