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Nearly 8 million Tunisian voters go to polling stations on Sunday to elect, for a second legislative election, their new Parliament, in a context of economic and political crisis. According to experts, turnout is expected to be low.
Nearly 8 million Tunisians are invited to vote on Sunday (January 29th) to elect a new parliament with powers limited by President Kaïs Saïed, once morest a backdrop of disaffection with politics and growing economic difficulties.
A total of 262 candidates (for 131 of the 161 seats) are running in the second round of the legislative elections, one of the last stages in the establishment of an ultra-presidentialist system, the objective of Kaïs Saïed since his coup de force in the summer 2021.
On July 25, 2021, deeming the country ungovernable, the President dismissed his Prime Minister and froze the Parliamentary Assembly, dissolved in the spring of 2022 before a reform of the Constitution last summer which greatly restricted the prerogatives of Parliament.
The latter, made up of the Assembly of Deputies, elected on Sunday, and a National Council of Regions (still to be established), “does not grant confidence to the government and cannot censure it, except by the majority of two-thirds of the two chambers,” lawyer and political scientist Hamadi Redissi told AFP. Furthermore, the president cannot be impeached even for serious misconduct.
“Given the disinterest of the population [pour la politique]this Parliament will have little legitimacy, the president, all powerful thanks to the Constitution of 2022, will be able to dominate it as he pleases”, estimates Youssef Cherif, expert of the Columbia Global Centers.
In the first round, on December 17, 2022, only 11.22% of voters had moved, the highest abstention since the 2011 Revolution which brought down the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and marked the advent of democracy. Experts expect turnout to be low once more.
“The country is on the verge of collapse”
As in the first round, the opposition, marginalized by a voting system prohibiting candidates from displaying a political affiliation, called for a boycott of the vote, also in the name of its rejection of the “coup” of Kaïs Saïed.
The campaign appears bland, with few election signs and mostly unknown candidates.
To mobilize public opinion, especially young people who had voted overwhelmingly in 2019 for Kaïs Saïed, then a novice in politics, the electoral authority organized televised debates during prime time.
But in the street, the attention is elsewhere. The population has seen its purchasing power plunge with inflation above 10%, and is experiencing sporadic shortages of products such as milk, oil or semolina. “The country is on the verge of collapse,” said Hamadi Redissi, worried regarding the shortages that “the president pathetically blames on ‘speculators’, ‘traitors’, ‘saboteurs'”.
“General Discontent”
Despite “general discontent” fueled by transport or education strikes, the demonstrations do not mobilize the crowds and “the status quo may continue, as long as the average Tunisian does not see a credible alternative to the president Saïed,” said Youssef Cherif.
The opposition, which called on the president to resign following the snub of the first round, remains divided into three irreconcilable blocs: the National Salvation Front coalesced around the Islamist-inspired party Ennahda – Kaïs Saïed’s pet peeve –, the PDL of ‘Abir Moussi who claims the legacy of Ben Ali and the leftist parties.
Another impasse: the crucial negotiations of the country, very indebted, with the IMF for a loan of almost 2 billion dollars have been stalled for months.
Various factors seem to slow down an agreement: firstly, according to Youssef Cherif, there is “the role of the United States”, heavyweight of the IMF, worried regarding an autocratic drift in Tunisia, “fallen star” when it was “a model of democracy”. And President Saïed “seems to hesitate to accept the diktats of the IMF” for painful reforms such as the lifting of subsidies on basic products, deciphers Youssef Cherif.
There is “a flagrant discrepancy between the untimely sovereignist declarations of the president once morest international organizations, and the program proposed to the IMF by the government”, abounds Hamadi Redissi. Glimmer of hope for this expert: an “initiative to save the country” launched by the powerful UGTT trade union center with the League for Human Rights, the Bar Association and the socio-economic NGO FTDES.
During the first meeting of this new “Quartet” of national dialogue, the leader of the UGTT Noureddine Taboubi promised Friday “a coherent, rational and independent plan” to try to solve the “economic, social and political” problems.
With AFP