2024-09-27 20:18:20
The Tunisian Parliament revised the electoral law on Friday just days before a presidential election blocked by the camp of the outgoing president, Kaïs Saïed. The voted text removes from the administrative court the prerogative of arbitrating electoral disputes and entrusts it to the Court of Appeal, considered by critics of the law as “justice under orders”.
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It is an “unconstitutional” text for its opponents. In Tunisia, Parliament adopted on Friday September 27 a draft revision of the electoral law, contested by civil society as a “change in the rules of the game” a few days before the presidential election of October 6 in which President Kaïs Saïed is running. a new mandate.
Citing a “conflict” between administrative justice and the electoral authority Isie, more than a third of the deputies had presented a text to be voted on “urgently” to withdraw from the administrative court the prerogative of arbitrating electoral disputes and entrust it to the Court of Appeal.
See alsoSophie Bessis: “In Kaïs Saïed’s rhetoric, the separation of powers makes no sense”
The text was adopted by 116 votes in favor, 12 votes against and eight abstentions.
“116 deputies elected with 11% participation (in spring 2023, Editor’s note), a world record for abstention, transferred the electoral dispute from the administrative court to a justice system one week before the vote. Tunisia has never experienced a charade like this, even before 2011,” reacted political commentator Hatem Nafti on X.
At the end of August, the administrative court convened on appeal had reinstated in the presidential race, to everyone’s surprise, three candidates excluded from a preliminary list by Isie on August 10 and considered to be the most serious rivals of President Saïed.
They were Mondher Zenaïdi, former minister of the Ben Ali regime, Abdellatif Mekki, a former leader of the Islamo-conservative Ennahda movement, and Imed Daïmi, an advisor to ex-president Moncef Marzouki, close to ‘Ennahda.
On September 2, Isie published a “final” list, which completely excludes these candidates, but several of them filed new administrative appeals which could have invalidated the presidential election.
A “distorted” process
For the ballot, Isie accepted only three candidacies: those of Kaïs Saïed, 66 years old, Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59 years old, a former deputy of the pan-Arab left, and Ayachi Zammel, 43 years old, a little industrialist. known at the head of a small liberal party.
Ayachi Zammel, in detention since the beginning of September, received a six-month prison sentence on Thursday in addition to a previous 20-month sentence for charges of falsifying sponsorships.
Tunisian and international NGOs and the UGTT trade union center criticized an Isie electoral authority “having lost its independence”, a process “distorted in favor of Mr. Saïed” and “an absence of the essential conditions for democratic, pluralist, transparent and integrity.”
The outgoing president, democratically elected in 2019, is accused by his detractors of having regressed rights and freedoms in Tunisia since a coup in the summer of 2021 by which he seized full powers.
During the session in Parliament, independent MP Bilel Mechri broadcast recordings of Kaïs Saïed who, in 2019, had denounced any amendment to the electoral law before a vote as “killing democracy”.
Another independent MP, Hichem Hosni, described the bill as “unconstitutional”, saying it would “only reinforce the crisis”.
At the start of the parliamentary session, several dozen demonstrators protested with cries of “Freedom, freedom” or “Get out, get out” addressed to Kaïs Saïed.
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