The Independent Higher Authority for Elections (ISIE) on Monday, September 2, decided to definitively block the Tunisian presidential race, overturning recent decisions to reinstate certain candidates taken by the Tunisian administrative court.
In the end, only three candidates, including President Kaïs Saïed, will participate in these elections, which should not bring any major surprises and whose first round is scheduled for October 6. The other two are Ayachi Zammel, a former MP and leader of a small and little-known party, arrested on Monday morning in a case of forgery of sponsorships, and Zouhair Maghzaoui, another former MP and leader of the Popular Movement, a party that supported Saïed’s coup when he assumed full power on July 25, 2021.
“There is no possible recourse”“Isie’s president, Farouk Bouasker, said on Monday, dashing the hopes raised in the opposition by the rulings of the Tunisian administrative court, which had reinstated three candidates in the race. In justifying his decision, Bouasker stressed that only Isie was constitutionally competent to manage the electoral process. He also claimed that the administrative court had not transmitted its decisions to Isie within the stipulated time frame.
He also mentioned the ongoing legal proceedings against the excluded candidates to justify his position, while a final ruling has not been issued. At the same time, dozens of people demonstrated in front of the headquarters of Isie in response to calls from several political parties and civil society organisations to ask the electoral body to respect the court’s decisions.
A political-legal confrontation
At the end of August, the administrative court of Tunis surprised by deciding to reinstate Abdellatif Mekki, a former minister affiliated with the Islamo-conservative party Ennahda, and Imed Daïmi, vice-president of Hizb El-Hirak, the party of former president Moncef Marzouki, as well as Mondher Zenaïdi, former minister of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and considered a serious competitor of President Kaïs Saïed. According to the spokesman of the administrative court and several lawyers, these reinstatements were considered legally definitive.
This is therefore a political-legal confrontation that the electoral body has decided to initiate, provoking strong reactions among legal experts. “The Isie not only positions itself as a judge, but also sets itself up as the highest control body, seriously undermining the principle of separation of powers. Its arguments are only pretexts, it is a perversion and manipulation of legal norms as well as the principle of law. This is called confiscation.”protests Sana Ben Achour, professor of public law. “This is a second coup d’état after the one of July 25, 2021. These elections are not real elections, they are procedures to consolidate authoritarian power”reported.
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