Tunisian President Kais Saied is standing for a second term in an election set for October 6. Accused of authoritarianism by the opposition, the incumbent is maintaining an iron grip on the country’s political life, which has seen arrests of potential candidates and the recent replacement of 19 ministers. FRANCE 24 speaks with Tunisian essayist Hatem Nafti.
In a speech broadcast on Sunday night, Saied announced the dismissal of Tunisia' foreign minister, the defence minister and 17 other cabinet members. The move followed the surprise replacement of former premier Ahmed Hachani with Prime Minister Kamel Madouri on August 7.
The president justified this sweeping change in the name of “national security” and “the supreme interest of the state”. He said that “a corrupt system whose participants hope for a return to the past” has “managed to manipulate” a large number of officials and block the inner workings of the state.
At least three candidates will face him in the October 6 presidential vote: Zouhair Maghzaoui, a former MP from the pan-Arab left; Ayachi Zammel, an industrialist and the leader of a liberal party; and Abdellatif Mekki, a conservative Islamist.
A Tunisian court on Thursday accepted the appeal of Mondher Znaidi, a former minister who worked with the late president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, against the rejection of his candidacy by the election authority.
The final list of candidates must be made official during the first week of September. Some potential challengers to Saied, who was elected in 2019, have complained that they have faced administrative obstacles to obtaining the sponsorship forms and copies of judicial records that are required to stand.
Tunisian essayist Hatem Nafti, the author of “Tunisie, vers un populisme autoritaire?” ("Tunisia, towards an authoritarian populism?), published in 2022, and “Notre ami Kaïs Saïed. Essai sur la démocrature tunisienne” ("Our friend Kais Saied: Essay on the condition of democracy in Tunisia), due for publication on October 3, judges Saied’s five-year term harshly.
FRANCE 24 spoke to Nafti about the arrest of opposition figures and critical voices, the propagation of conspiracy theories and the advent of authoritarianism in Tunisia.
FRANCE 24: In what kind of political climate will the October 6 presidential election unfold?
Hatem Nafti: First of all, we need to remember that the current president, Kais Saied, under the pretext of an economic and health crisis, staged a coup d’état on July 25, 2021. Since then, he has completely transformed political governance by moving towards a regime with very, very extensive presidential powers.
He has, for example, given himself the right to dismiss judges. Simply on the basis of a police report saying that so-and-so is a corrupt judge, he can dismiss him. The judges who don’t rule as the president would like can find themselves suddenly banned from practicing or forcibly transferred. The executive puts pressure on the judiciary and the president makes no secret of it.
In practice, we have an ultra-presidential regime where the president decides on almost everything. Saied governed by decree-laws between September 2021 and March 2023. With Decree 54 against cybercrime (in 2022), he went back on the liberalisation that Tunisia had experienced since the revolution in 2011. Concerning press offences, until now we had laws which did not provide for prison sentences for defamation.
Decree 54 is supposed to fight fake news but many people who support the president actually spread it, inciting hatred morning, noon and night, and they are hardly ever investigated. The decree above all targets the opposition and voices that are critical of the regime.
Which candidates will face the president in the October 6 vote?
The list of accepted candidates has not been finalised, but most of the opposition candidates are in prison. Among the three opposition candidates selected so far (editor’s note: this interview took place before the Tunisian Administrative Court upheld Znaidi’s appeal), one must travel every day from town to town to respond to accusations of supposedly having tampered with the sponsorships needed for his candidacy.
On Tuesday, the former health minister, Abdellatif Mekki, a figure in the conservative Islamist party Ennahda, was authorised to stand. But an examining magistrate has banned him from travelling beyond his district, speaking to the press or using social media.
We must also remember that after the coup, the independent electoral body, whose members were elected by a qualified majority of two-thirds of the parliament, was dissolved – and the president has since named members of a new body himself.
In this context, do you think that Tunisian voters will go to the polls?
It’s very difficult to say. Turnout was between 11 and 12 percent for the 2022-2023 legislative elections. A world record! Except this time, there’s something at stake. In Tunisian culture, a presidential election is very important, like in France. Everything is going to depend on the ballot's line-up, which is still in flux.
The opposition does not dare call for a boycott because there may be serious candidates who represent the different political families (people from Ben Ali's regime, the Islamists and the democrats). It’s thus difficult to say, today, if the elections will be valid. This will depend on the conduct of the executive and the resilience of the opposition.
It’s also important to emphasise that there is a massive rejection of the entire political class by the population, a sort of resignation: “anyway, there’s no alternative for president”. There could therefore be a legitimist reflex among many Tunisians who view the post-revolutionary period (2011- 2021) as a sort of dark age.
In your publications, you denounce the conspiracy theories that Saied frequently invokes to explain Tunisia’s ills. Will these theories have an impact on voters?
Saied explains his failures in terms of plots, either by old elites or from abroad. He explains everything in terms of plots, whether it relates to the economy when there are supply problems or the drought hitting Tunisia for the past seven years.
In the face of the influx of sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia, he invokes the “great replacement” theory instead of saying the European Union supports any government in power to reinforce control of its southern borders to prevent migrants from reaching Europe (editor’s note: Tunisia in July 2023 signed a “strategic and comprehensive partnership” with the EU on immigration, providing Tunisia with €150 million in direct aid.)
The way he speaks about the issue of immigration is very effective in the eyes of many Tunisians, who wait in line every day to buy bread and often perceive migrants as colonisers.
Is Saied still perceived by some in Tunisia as a bulwark against the Islamist party Ennahda?
No, we need to stop with that. Many people supported his coup because they thought he would rid them of the Islamists. But Saied introduced Sharia law into the constitution. When it comes to secularism, I’ve seen a little better.
This is a major misunderstanding among the Tunisian elite and a part of the Western elite. Saied is a populist who criticises representative democracy. He is opposed to political Islam because he is against all political parties, who are for him a perversion of the popular will. He is also against all intermediary bodies, including associations and particularly NGOs, which he considers to be the "armed wing" of the Western powers.
This interview is a translation of the original in French.
