Tunisia’s Independent High Electoral Authority (ISIE) decided on Monday, September 2, to retain only three candidates for the presidential elections on October 6, including outgoing President Kaïs Saïed, and to exclude three other candidates who had been readmitted by the administrative court last week.
“The administrative court has not officially communicated its decisions [à l’autorité électorale] within the 48-hour period provided by law”announced ISIE chief Farouk Bouasker, justifying the exclusion of three other candidates.
The list was announced on August 10. “It is final and not subject to any appeal”Bouasker added in a statement broadcast on national television. Besides the outgoing president, the other two candidates are Zouhair Maghzaoui, a former member of the pan-Arab left, and Ayachi Zammel, a little-known industrialist and leader of a small liberal party. Zammel was arrested at dawn on Monday on suspicion of false sponsorship in his candidacy file, a member of his campaign team said.
Last week, the administrative court sitting on appeal accepted, to everyone’s surprise, the appeals of three candidates, considered serious competitors of President Kaïs Saïed. Democratically elected in 2019, he is accused of authoritarian drift since the coup d’état of July 25, 2021 during which he granted himself full powers.
The candidates readmitted by the court were Abdellatif Mekki, former leader of the Islamo-conservative movement Ennahda, Mondher Zenaïdi, former minister in the Ben Ali regime, and Imed Daïmi, advisor to former president Moncef Marzouki, also close to Ennahda.
On Saturday, 26 Tunisian and international NGOs and nearly 200 personalities, including many lawyers, called on Isie to respect the decisions of the Administrative Court, stressing that they were “binding and cannot be challenged”.
