Sunday’s election in Tunisia will mark the first since President Kais Saied was elected to power as an independent with no prior political experience in 2019 and later extended his rule in a “self-coup” in July 2021. He suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, Hichem Mechichi, and assumed executive authority.
Rights groups, both international and domestic, have decried plummeting standards in civil liberties, freedom of speech and the waves of arbitrary arrests to have targeted the president’s critics and opponents under Saied’s presidency.
