Overseas polling stations opened their doors on October 4, 2024. Tunisian voters abroad were thus able to select their candidate from a list even more restricted than those presented in the last two elections to take place under Ben Ali. In fact, the last time Tunisians witnessed a three-candidate race was in 1999. Such a particularly sparse list is the result of a policy which began exactly one year prior to the opening of polling stations and which aimed to prevent as many candidates from running as possible.
Ironically, the first victim of this policy was none other than a steadfast devotee of the Ben Ali regime. President of the Free Destourian Party (PDL) Abir Moussi was one of Kais Saied’s main opponents. In February 2022, she announced her candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Among her arsenal of opposition tactics, the lawyer chose to attack Saied on legal grounds, appealing numerous decisions made by the government with the ultimate goal of dismantling Saied’s regime. It was indeed in the process of making one such appeal that Moussi was arrested. On October 3, Moussi protested against the non-issuance of a receipt by the Carthage registry office for her informal appeal contesting the new division of districts for local elections. While she was held in police custody—whose legality was contested by her defense team[1]—a detention warrant was issued against Moussi. With a maximum term of up to 14 months, the warrant effectively compromised the lawyer’s chances of carrying out a campaign in normal conditions. Moussi initially faced several charges, including one under article 72 of the Criminal Code[2]. For this charge alone, Moussi theoretically faced the possibility of capital punishment. While that charge was ultimately dropped, the PDL’s president would face still other accusations.
Saied liquidates opponents through the judiciary
The example of Abir Moussi was to become commonplace among the majority of candidates deemed to present serious competition. In the months that followed, preliminary investigations were opened and reopened by a judiciary largely subservient to the regime. In fact, Saied had his eye on the judicial apparatus ever since July 25, 2021. In laying out the “exceptional measures” he had taken, the president announced his intention to take over the office of the public prosecutor. Although formally renouncing it, he took methodical steps to weaken this counter-power. First, he dissolved the elected High Judicial Council and replaced it with a structure whose members he appointed, directly or indirectly. Via decree-law on June 1, 2022, Saied granted himself the power to dismiss any magistrate on the basis of a simple police report (law enforcement being hierarchically beneath the president). He subsequently dismissed 57 judges, 50 of whom obtained provisional reintegration from the Administrative Court. The Ministry of Justice refused to comply, effectively communicating to magistrates their “civil employee” status subject to the will of the executive branch! To complete this transformation, the government “pulled the plug” on the High Judicial Council[3], thus directly disposing of judges’ careers with the ability to transfer them by way of a simple memo. A number of judges who did not operate as expected by the executive power subsequently found themselves transferred or laid off by the Ministry[4]. And so it was this judiciary body which functioned to adjudicate in cases relating to Kais Saied’s potential rivals.
President of the Republican People’s Union (UPR), Lotfi M’Raihi holds a position close to that of Saied. Occupying a populist conservative niche and displaying a certain erudition, the retired doctor was able to seduce and obtain 6.56% of votes in the 2019 presidential election. With no attempt to conceal his intention of running for president in 2024, M’Raihi repeatedly criticized the outgoing president. In January, he was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for offending the head of state. In March, he was summoned by the public prosecutor, sentenced and wanted for arrest. He was apprehended on July 3 and, surprisingly, a photograph of his arrest was diffused on social media. M’Raihi was initially sentenced to eight months in prison and lifelong ineligibility for “vote-buying”; after an appeal, his sentence was reduced to six months.
Another candidate ideologically close to Kais Saied, Safi Saïd had already run in 2014 and 2019, collecting 0.8% and 7.11% of votes cast. Elected as deputy in 2019, his position regarding the parliamentary freeze changed over time. Saïd was affiliated with the collective “Tunisians against the coup d’Etat” before going it alone. He announced his intention to go after the High Judicial Council, promising to reverse the major authoritarian aspects of Saied’s mandate. In June 2024, Saïd was sentenced in absentia to four months in prison for a case relating to endorsement forgery during the 2014 election. In August, he was apprehended by police while attempting to cross the Algerian border. He was released, but sentenced to serve a three-month suspended prison sentence by Algeria’s justice department.
Having served as Tunisia’s health minister between 2012 and 2014 and once again in 2020, Abdelatif Mekki is one of Ennahdha’s rare leaders with a relatively positive image, doubtlessly strengthened by his management of the first wave of Covid-19. Part of the opposition to Rached Ghannouchi, Mekki ultimately left Ennahdha to found his own conservative Islamic movement. On July 12, 2024, an investigating judge interrogated the Islamic leader in relation to the death of Jilani Daboussi. Investigators were relatively soft on Mekki, who was Health Minister at the time of Daboussi’s death. After his hearing, the investigating judge banned Mekki from leaving the country, appearing in the media and leaving his neighborhood in Tunis’ southern suburb. These decisions effectively prevented him from campaigning.
Attack on the media
The past election year was marked by an accelerated crackdown on the media. Promulgated in September 2022, Decree-law 54 designated a prison sentence of up to 10 years for “false information.” The first lawsuits and sentences involved critics of the regime. And things only heated up as the election drew near. Public television reduced airtime devoted to national politics, and the few talk shows to broach the topic clearly leaned in favor of the administration in place. Private companies which continued to give voice to political opponents endured increasingly strong pressure from the government, which was determined to handle uncooperative journalists through the courts.
The case of Mohamed Boughalleb illustrates the government’s tightening grip on the media. Authorities have kept a watchful eye on Boughalleb, an outspoken critic whose particularly virulent tone got him kicked off one of the country’s main media outlets before he found refuge at a privately owned regional radio station. Since 2023, Boughalleb has been the object of numerous accusations by Tunisia’s former Religious Affairs minister on the basis of Decree-law 54. In March, Boughalleb denounced the composition of staff members who travel with the minister overseas. The journalist was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison for “accusing a civil servant or employee of illegal activities in relation to his duties, without establishing the veracity of these claims.” The Appeals Court increased the sentence to eight months in prison, pushing back the journalist’s release until after the presidential election.
Several weeks later, journalist Khouloud Mabrouk, host of the political show 90 Minutes on IFM, endured a long interrogation by judicial police for having interviewed former minister Mabrouk Kourchid who had fled the country. Although she remained free, the station decided to cancel her show.
A decision doubtlessly related to the government’s radical shift in May 2024. On Saturday, May 11, 2024, police burst into the headquarters of the Tunisian Bar Association and arrested Sonia Dahmani. During a TV show earlier that week, the lawyer had made an ironic remark in reference to a conspiracy theory according to which sub-Saharan migrants are presumed to be guilty of plotting to colonize the country. For her comment—“Such a wonderful country the migrants want to rob us of!”—the public prosecutor pressed charges against Dahmani on the basis of Decree-law 54 and refused her request for deferment. Her arrest was filmed live by a France 24 journalist, and pushed Tunisia into the international spotlight. A few moments later, other police agents arrested journalists Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies who host morning shows on the same radio station as Dahmani. Zeghidi and Bsaies were quickly sentenced to one year in prison for old statements and publications.
The nearly simultaneous arrests of Dahmani, Zeghidi and Bsaies and the content of investigations constituted a clear message by the government, which no longer faced even a single contestation and thus succeeded in its efforts to intimidate critics. Violence and the arbitrary nature of certain accusations fueled fears of descent into a totalitarian regime, razing the constitutional principle of freedom of thought.
ISIE, main tool of the crackdown
Beside the judiciary, the High Independent Elections Authority (ISIE) served as the government’s transmission belt and helped to control media outlets critical of the regime. Conceived after the revolution as a means to pry the organization from the grasp of the Interior Ministry, the ISIE maintained its independence through its method for appointing members[5] and periodically replacing them. But in 2022, Saied unilaterally changed the rules and set up an ISIE whose seven members were hand-picked by the president. This amendment, criticized by the Venice Commission, was supposed to be temporary while a constitutional referendum was organized. Under the new constitution, a new nine-member ISIE was to be set up and its method of appointing members specified by the law[6]. This change, however, never took place, rendering the constitutionality of this “temporary” ISIE questionable.
It was thus the commission led by magistrate Farouk Bouasker, who owed his appointment to the president, which was to oversee the elections. In 2022, the ISIE did not sanction Kais Saied’s manifest violation of electoral silence on the day of the constitutional referendum. In spite of its questionable constitutionality, the ISIE disposed of even greater power in 2024 than it did in 2022. Initially, it disposed of “general control” of the electoral process, including with regard to the media. Until 2022, the law mandated the publication of a joint regulatory framework by the ISIE and HAICA [7] with the goal of upholding equity among candidates during the electoral period. The HAICA was used as an instrument for monitoring. Taking advantage of a disagreement which took place during legislative elections, the ISIE appropriated the prerogative of monitoring audiovisual media outlets. Kais Saied officially attributed the elections authority with this role in the following elections. In February 2024, the government stopped paying the salaries of HAICA members, a decision which could have meant the demise of the audiovisual authority had its administrative council not decided to continue working on a volunteer basis. Then, on the basis of Decree-law 54, the ISIE prosecuted public figures critical of its work. During the electoral period, a number of private media outlets[8] indicated that they received warnings and formal notices from the ISIE. To demonstrate this pressure, Mosaique FM published a formal notice it had received and which cited the names of Midi Show hosts Kaouther Zantour and Essia Latrous. The electoral commission condemned the journalists’ “violation of rules and norms during the electoral period, particularly their duty to remain neutral, objective and balanced in their coverage of the election, as well as the absence of different voices.” In the notice, no tangible facts were mentioned. These threats weighed on journalists, pushing some to self-censor.
The ISIE even withdrew the accreditation of journalist Khaoula Boukrim. In an email, the founder of Tumedia was informed that she had failed to cover the electoral process in an “objective, balanced and neutral” manner. The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) published a series of statements denouncing “pressure applied by the ISIE threatening journalists’ independence, ” and accusing the commission of “undermining the electoral process.”
Beyond its new role as media watchdog, the ISIE took over parliament’s role in setting electoral standards. The Constitution of 2022 introduced restrictive modifications to requirements for presidential candidates. A law should have been voted into place by the ARP, but Saied decided otherwise, considering a law to be unnecessary. The president thus attributed the ISIE with a sort of legislative power enabling it to amend the law through regulation. The authority imposed a series of restrictive limitations such as the provision of a criminal background check (B3) which is actually the discretion of the Interior Ministry. The ISIE used its power to refuse certain candidates, in particular political prisoners. Whereas the law confers upon it the role of judicial police, not a single member of the ISIE lifted a finger to “ascertain” the veracity of the candidacies presented by Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi and Abir Moussi, effectively removing them from the race.
These extended powers were counterbalanced by the election authority’s inability to set a date for elections. At the end of the process which culminated in the creation of the National Council of Regions and Districts (CNRD, Parliament’s upper house), the ISIE was supposed to fix a date. In fact, it never would. It wasn’t until July 2, 2024 when President and future candidate Kais Saied set the date that voters would cast their ballots.
The non-amendment of the electoral law had another adverse effect. In the 2014 text, presidential candidates had to collect a certain number of endorsements in order to run, earning the support of either 10 parliamentary deputies, 40 presidents of territorial collectivities, or 10,000 voters. In the latter case—and the most common among contenders—endorsements must be spread across at least ten electoral districts, with no less than 500 endorsements per district. However, since the 2022 legislative elections, district size has been significantly reduced from the level of governorate[9] to one or several delegations. By keeping the same rule for smaller districts, the government drastically reduced the number of candidates capable of gathering enough endorsements to run in the race. Potential candidates saw their chances further diminished as deadlines were cut short. Finally, endorsements could only be submitted by a form provided by the ISIE which was unavailable to political prisoners.
The result of all these bureaucratic limitations had an impact on the number of candidates authorized by the ISIE. On August 11, 2024, the elections authority had retained only three individuals: Ayachi Zammel, Kais Saied and Zouhaier Maghzaoui. The outgoing president presented endorsements from across all three categories—voters, collectivities and parliamentarians—while Maghzaoui only presented sponsors from deputies within his group at the ARP.
And while monitoring has become an important safeguard of transparent elections since 2011, the ISIE decided to refuse the accreditation of two Tunisian NGOs: IWatch and Mourakiboun. The latter covered all elections post-July 25, providing very good estimates of participation rates, a key issue since 2021. According to the ISIE, these associations receive “suspicious foreign funding.”
The authority, which does not theoretically dispose of any tools that would enable it to monitor NGO financing[10], reports that it transmitted whatever elements it had to the justice department. According to the investigative journalism platform Al Qatiba, the number of civil society observers dropped from 18,000 in 2019 to 1,707 in 2024. A decrease explained not only by bureaucratic limitations but also by the climate of fear and the demonization of NGOs, says Bassem Maâtar, director of ATIDE, an association authorized by the ISIE.
Legislative and judicial “functions”
The day that the final candidates list was presented, Ayachi Zammel, the only candidate retained by the ISIE who had presented voter endorsements exclusively, was arrested. Accused of forging endorsements, Zammel was prosecuted for a number of similar accusations in different courts across the country. Since 2014, a number of endorsement fraud cases have been brought to light. The difficult point in this type of investigation is to establish that the candidate himself was behind the forgery. In 2022, Kais Saied unilaterally amended the law to introduce prison sentences and a lifelong ban from running in elections. However, according to former administrative magistrate and electoral judge Ahmed Souab, these provisions apply to legislative elections and do not concern endorsements. This fact did not prevent several judges from applying the text to candidates for the 2024 election, including Zammel. Today, this candidate who spent the entirety of the campaign in detention faces 31 years[11] in prison, while his campaign director faces some 20 years behind bars. The president of the Court of Manouba who ordered Zammel’s release in September was transferred to Kef. Notably, Kais Saied is also the object of accusations relating to endorsement fraud during the electoral campaign. For example, the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) Mahdia office revealed that a local group stole personal data to fill out endorsement forms for Saied. To this day, there is no publicly available information regarding charges against these individuals who are not protected by presidential immunity.
Three candidates not approved by the ISIE—Abdelatif Mekki, Imed Daimi and Mondher Zenaidi—obtained their reintegration by order of the Administrative Court. The judges of this supreme court deemed the candidacy of these political figures acceptable in the eyes of the law. The ISIE decided to override this judicial decision, maintaining its initial list. Those close to the regime launched a campaign demonizing magistrates, while the authorities set out against the three candidates in question. Mekki was sentenced to eight months in prison and banned for life from running in elections for endorsement fraud; Daimi was prosecuted by the ISIE for “false declaration”[12]; Zenaidi became the object of an international search warrant under the anti-terrorist law.
On September 5, more than one hundred law professors, including deans, denounced the ISIE’s non-respect of decisions by the Administrative Court. In this context, Nawaat interviewed Wahid Ferchichi, public law professor and dean of the University of Legal, Political and Social Sciences of Tunis.
Although the Administrative Court recalled that its decision was irrevocable, “the legislative function”[13] decided to intervene. On September 20, 34 deputies submitted a draft law aiming to consolidate the prerogative of adjudicating in electoral disputes to the benefit of the one judicial justice, thereby nullifying decisions made by the Administrative Court. The parliamentary bureau interrupted its recess and summoned deputies to a special hearing. Despite opposition from certain civil society actors as well as the provisional High Judicial Council, the text was adopted by 116 deputies, with 12 votes against the draft and 8 abstentions. Finally, Kais Saied promulgated a text whose principle he had long rejected. In a public statement in 2019, the president, a legal expert, noted that major modifications should only be introduced to the electoral code by referendum, and that any alternative initiative to introduce amendments was tantamount to the “assassination of democracy.”
On election day, special coverage of the polls was broadcasted on national television, presented by journalists notoriously close to the government. While the ISIE prohibited the publication of any polls taken before the announcement of preliminary results, Sigma Conseil was authorized to break this rule; At 8pm, the institute’s president Hassen Zargouni gave estimates relatively close to the final result. Despite the protests of less fortunate candidates, the verdict was accepted by his competitors and no appeal was formulated.
According to the reports of different observation authorities, although several minor violations were exposed, they were not significant enough to have any impact on the result. Nevertheless, overall favorable conditions at the polls on election day and Saied’s net victory should by no means gloss over the crackdown which marked the entire process. For the first time since 2011, the criteria of freedom and transparency were seriously strained. The government employed a range of tactics deployed to the advantage of the outgoing president. Ultimately, the fate of Saied’s sole competitor to secure voter endorsements, plus the numerous lawsuits which targeted the majority of serious candidates, succeeded in reinstating a climate of fear that many believed to have faded into history along with the Ben Ali regime on January 14, 2011.
[1] Because Moussi is a lawyer, the procedures of her detention and interrogation violate common law.
[2] The perpetrator of an attack aiming to change the form of government, to incite people to take up arms against one another, or to provoke disorder, murder or looting in Tunisia is punishable by death.
[3] Through a combination of not replacing magistrates who had been transferred or retired.
[4] This practice is unconstitutional according to the Constitution adopted by Kais Saied, which holds (article 121), “A magistrate cannot be transferred without his agreement. He can neither be revoked nor suspended nor relieved of his duties nor be sanctioned except in cases described by the law.”
[5] These members were elected by a qualified majority of two-thirds of the Legislative Assembly (National Constituent Assembly, subsequently the Assembly of the Representatives of the People); Organic Law 2012-2023 of December 20, 2012.
[6] Article 134 of the Constitution.
[7] Independent High Authority for Audiovisual Communication.
[8] In a statement, the SNJT evoked the cases of Mosaique FM, Jawhara FM, Diwan FM, Son FM.
[9] With the exception of the most populous districts—Tunis, Nabeul and Sfax—which were divided into two districts.
[10] Prerogative of the Central Bank and the government.
[11] Between the judgements made by the courts of first instance and appeal.
[12] Regarding the possession of another nationality—lost since—the day that his application for candidacy was withdrawn by the ISIE.
[13] The Constitution of 2022 no longer refers to “powers” (executive, legislative and judiciary), but rather “functions.”
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