A woman votes at a polling station during the presidential election in Tunis, Tunisia, on Oct. 6.Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters
With most of his opponents disqualified or jailed, Tunisian President Kais Saied appears headed to an easy victory in an election that could represent the end of the democratic era that emerged from the Arab Spring protest movement.
A survey on Tunisia’s national television channel, released about two hours after the polls closed on Sunday evening, suggested that Mr. Saied would win 89 per cent of the vote. Official results are expected early this week.
Mr. Saied, who first won the presidency in 2019, has increasingly tightened his grip on the North African country. He dissolved parliament in 2021, suspended the constitution and orchestrated the writing of a new constitution to boost his authority. His powers could become nearly dictatorial after Sunday’s election, analysts say.
Voter turnout was low in Sunday’s election as many Tunisians chose to stay away from the polling stations after key opposition candidates were arrested or banned from the ballot papers.
Turnout was officially recorded at just 28 per cent, far lower than in the previous two elections, despite urgent messages from the ruling coalition asking its supporters to vote.
The Arab Spring began in Tunisia with widespread street protests in 2010 and 2011, eventually toppling the long-time dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled the country. For the next decade, Tunisia held relatively free elections, becoming the most enduring democracy to result from the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East.
But the latest election is expected to entrench Mr. Saied’s rule. At least nine prospective candidates were detained or prosecuted, and independent observers from Tunisian watchdog groups were barred from monitoring the election. The rulings of an election appeals court were ignored by the official electoral commission, which is stacked with officials who were hand-picked by the president.
“Saied will undoubtedly ‘win’ this rigged farce of a faux election,” said Monica Marks, an assistant professor at New York University Abu Dhabi who studies Tunisian politics and witnessed the voting on Sunday.
The low turnout is because “no genuine competition exists, many Tunisians see the process as a pointlessly authoritarian charade, and many Tunisians are not even aware that two candidates other than Kais Saied are on the ballot, due to media restrictions,” she told The Globe and Mail.
She predicted that Tunisia would emerge from the election as “an ineffective, increasingly weakened and paranoid autocracy.”
Only two rival candidates were permitted onto the ballot to challenge Mr. Saied. One of them, Ayachi Zammel, was later imprisoned and sentenced to a total of 14 years on accusations of falsifying voter signatures when he submitted his candidacy. His lawyer said the verdict was a farce.
The other candidate, Zouhair Maghzaoui, is seen as a minor candidate who has supported Mr. Saied in the past. Three other prominent candidates were disqualified from the election.
The arrests and disqualifications could be a symptom of Mr. Saied’s anxiety about his declining popularity, analysts say. The International Crisis Group, an independent global think tank, said it obtained unpublished polls showing that Mr. Saied was supported by only 20 to 25 per cent of likely voters.
The fear of losing has triggered a sweeping new campaign of repression, reaching into all corners of society, the Crisis Group said. Even officials from the Tunisian Swimming Federation were arrested and charged with plotting against state security. “The authorities seemed to see subversion everywhere,” Crisis Group expert Michael Ayari wrote this month.
“Saied will likely remain in power, but his legitimacy may be seriously damaged at both the national and international levels,” he added. “Social and political tensions may also heighten. It is possible that candidates who were unjustly excluded will start legal proceedings to demand that the vote be annulled. Their supporters might then mobilize in the streets.”
The Institute for Security Studies, an Africa-based think tank, noted that Mr. Saied has largely escaped any international pressure against his power grab, partly by giving it a veneer of legality. “His co-operation with European governments in controlling the influx of immigrants seems to have blunted criticism from that quarter,” it added in a report this month.