PREVIEW
Authorities intimidate presidential candidates as the election day nears
President Kaïs Saïed has not announced his intention to stand but the field of candidates ahead of presidential elections scheduled for 6 October is quickly thinning out.
Last week, a judge in a Tunis court put former health minister, Abdellatif Mekki, under a gag order and restricted his movements, leaving Mekki as the latest possible Saïed opponent to face legal barriers to standing in October.
Mekki was a senior member of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party before founding his own political party, Work and Accomplishment. He is being investigated, along with a group of politicians, over the 2014 killing of a prominent physician. Mekki contends that the charges have been timed to prevent him from standing against Saïed in October.
Ennahda’s leader Rached Ghannouchi and Free Destourian Party President Abir Moussi are also among those in prison. Ghannouchi faces a variety of charges, which his supporters say are politically motivated, including claims that he was involved in an illicit foreign finance scheme ahead of the last presidential election.
Tunisia’s anti-terrorism court also sentenced him to one year in prison after Ghannouchi was reported to have described Saïed as a ‘tyrant’ at a funeral in February 2022 (Dispatches 25/4/23,Saïed steps up attacks on the opposition).
Moussi, a right-wing national populist, was arrested in October 2023, initially while being investigated under Tunisia’s cybercrime law.
The Saïed government has gradually stepped up its intimidation and detention of opposition politicians and dissidents since dismissing his government and ruling by decree in July 2021, before overhauling the constitution to increase presidential powers in 2022.
Ghazi Chaouachi, the leader of opposition party at-Tayyār ad-Dīmuqrāṭī (Democratic Current), and Noureddine Bhiri, an ex-MP and former justice minister, are also among those to have been arrested and detained (Dispatches 5/9/23, African Union court demands legal access for political detainees).
The assumption is that Saïed intends to seek a second term although his behaviour and public statements continue to be erratic, while extremely low turnouts for the constitutional referendum and parliamentary polls – below 10% of parliamentary elections in December 2022 – point to his unpopularity (Dispatches 23/12/22,Voters stay away en masse in challenge to Saïed).
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