In Tunisia, Parliament reviews the electoral law just before the presidential elections on October 6

The Tunisian Parliament examines, on Friday, September 27, a draft revision of the electoral law, contested by civil society as “change in the rules of the game” A few days before the presidential elections on October 6, in which President Kaïs Saïed seeks a new mandate.

Citing a ” conflict “ Between the administrative justice and the Independent High Electoral Authority (ISIE), more than a third of the deputies presented a text to vote “urgently” withdraw from the administrative court the prerogative to arbitrate electoral disputes and entrust it to the court of appeal.

At the end of August, the administrative court meeting on appeal reinstated into the presidential race, to everyone’s surprise, three candidates excluded from a preliminary list by the ISIE on August 10 and considered the most serious rivals of the president, Kaïs Saïed. . They were Mondher Zenaïdi, former minister of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Abdellatif Mekki, former leader of the Islamoconservative movement Ennahda, and Imed Daïmi, advisor to former president Moncef Marzouki, close to Ennahda.

On September 2, the ISIE published a list “definitive”which completely excludes these candidates, but several of them have presented new administrative appeals that could invalidate the presidential election.

A process “distorted in favor of Mr. Saïed”

For the vote, ISIE only accepted three candidates: those of Saïed, 66, Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, former deputy of the pan-Arab left, and Ayachi Zammel, 43, a little-known industrialist. at the head of a small liberal party.

Zammel, detained since early September, was sentenced on Thursday to six months in prison, in addition to a previous twenty-month sentence on accusations of forgery of sponsorship.

Tunisian and international NGOs and the UGTT union center criticize the electoral authority ISIE “having lost their independence”a process “biased in favor of Mr. Saïed” AND “an absence of the essential conditions for democratic, pluralistic, transparent and honest elections”.

The outgoing president, democratically elected in 2019, is accused by his detractors of having regressed in rights and freedoms in Tunisia since a coup d’état in the summer of 2021 that allowed him to gain full powers.

On Friday, near Parliament, several dozen protesters protested shouting “Freedom, freedom” EITHER “Out, out” addressed to Mr. Saïed. “Revised laws in the middle of the election in favor of Kaïs Saiïed = murder of democracy”a sign proclaimed.

One protester, Wissam Sghaier, spokesman for the Al-Joumhouri party (centrist), denounced a change “rules of the game in the last meters” before the vote. “It is a political crime that only confirms the abuses and repression” in the country, he said.