President Kais Saied (right) during his meeting with the head of the Tunisian Independent Supreme Elections Council, Farouk Bouaskar, this month (Anatolia)
After a long silence, Tunisian President Kais Saied broke his silence regarding the most important electoral date that Tunisia awaits during the current year, which is the presidential elections.
There has been a lot of speculation about its date, whether the Tunisian president will run for a new presidential term, and most importantly of all, who will compete with him in that race, which will take place in an almost radically different political climate than what prevailed before the start of what became known as the 25th session. July?
Appointment controversy
There is no longer any room for doubt. According to what was stated by the Tunisian President and documented by the Tunisian Presidency’s social media page, in a meeting with the head of the Independent High Authority for Elections, Farouk Bouaskar, the presidential elections will be held on time.
In that meeting, the Tunisian President stressed the need to address legal violations in all stages of the electoral process, including submitting nominations, the electoral campaign, and in the voting process itself.
Saeed indicated in his conversation with Bouaskar that it is not acceptable to approve nominations for people related to serious cases such as terrorism, without clarifying, as usual, what is meant by that description. Saeed also referred to the phenomenon of “political money” and its role in “poisoning” the electoral process. In service to those he described as corrupt people who work on what he called “mind falsification.”
Perhaps the most important reference included in the Tunisian presidency’s circular is President Saied’s talk about a paradox that resides in the speech and practices of his opponents, who said: They boycotted all the electoral stations that followed the launch of the July 25 process and were based on it, but they are currently praying day and night in preparing for the upcoming presidential elections.
Saeed concluded his intervention by saying: While his opponents are in the midst of aspiring to the presidential position, they forget that it is an assignment and not an honor, describing it as a trial and a heavy burden.
A reading based on which the Tunisian president considered that his opponents were daydreaming, immersed in what he said. They are meetings in secret and in public to achieve their main goal, which is to reach power through the presidential seat.
The positions launched by Saeed came after what was described by observers as the early electoral campaign that he launched through numerous field visits in which the man played the role of a man of government and a protesting opposition at the same time, criticizing the economic situation in the country and pledging to change it radically through what he frequently repeated about the necessity of striking. At the hands of corrupt people, monopolists, traitors, and those with foreign-related agendas.
The heart of the system
The controversy surrounding the electoral date established the institution of the presidency in Tunisia as the heart of the regime and the millstone of the ruling system. Due to the major changes that the Tunisian president introduced to the political structure in the country, after the 2010 revolution brought about a parliamentary system with faltering political and economic performance, the constitution written and imposed by President Saied himself gathered broad and unprecedented powers in the hands of the president, making the rest of the powers mere functions working in the service of the state. .
After the decade of democratic transition was an area of competition and conflicts between parties and intellectual and social trends, political life in Tunisia revolved around President Saied, until the opposition accused him of being the antagonist and the arbitrator.
This reality is considered a great and sufficient motivation for everyone to put their eggs in the presidential election betting basket. Whoever wants to change the political reality in the country cannot do so unless he obtains the presidential seat and enjoys the absolute powers that it grants, regardless of whether he retains it or ousts it. In favor of different rules of the political game.
If the opposition had announced its boycott of previous electoral dates, such as: legislative and elections for the Council of Regions, it gave a main reason that made it commit to that position, which is to consider what President Saied did as a coup against the revolution and the democratic transition in Tunisia, and therefore rejecting the electoral dates was such as “Whatever is built on falsehood is false.”
But the matter appears different with regard to presidential elections, not only in view of the value and effectiveness of the presidential institution and its centrality in the current political reality, but also in view of an electoral conclusion from previous dates, which in fact represents a strange paradox, as the opposition accuses President Saied’s regime of being a coup. He undermined the democratic gains. She did not accuse him of falsifying the results of those appointments, merely pointing out the deterioration of the political climate and the decline of freedoms in a way that imposed political desertification in the country, and emptied those appointments of any valuable political content or real practical impact that they might have.
This approach leaves the door ajar for a presidential election bet that could lead to what could be described as a potential electoral surprise, which explains the controversy witnessed by the Tunisian opposition. Between those who see the benefit of participating, and those who see it as futility and a free endorsement of what they consider a coup that must be radically boycotted.
The other side of the paradox is the stark distance between President Saied’s appeal to the people to the extent that he is accused of populism, and the participation rates at the electoral events and consultations that he ordered, which were unprecedented in terms of low turnout.
Public reluctance was justified by President Saied by the bad legacy that the faltering transition decade left in the mentality of Tunisians, to the point that elections and consultations became the last thing they wanted to participate in.
The opposition responds to a logic that this may have been understood in the first months after what Said did, but for the matter to continue year after year, from their point of view, this has an indication that only the eye of the ungrateful can miss, which is the isolation that Said and his path have become, and his reliance only on solid forces. In the Tunisian state to impose its trends.
A different touchstone
This time it is a different electoral bet. Speaking of a presidential competition on time, the Tunisian president accepts the challenge to put his popularity and options to the test, apparently not paying attention to the message sent to him by the very low public turnout rates on previous dates, to appear in a confident manner in the steps he hits the date. Another with history as he used to say that on other occasions.
This means an appointment with history that goes beyond the size of the country, its borders, and its concerns, to the problems of humanity, which Said believes is the time to understand and deal with them in a way that is radically different from what prevails in the world today, east and west... north and south.
To the extent that the Tunisian president is striving to include the Tunisian scene in a broader historical and geopolitical context, the opposition believes that the country’s problem must be dealt with “now... and here,” where a political climate that the opposition believes has been framed politically, judicially, and security-wise, to the point where even the slightest criticism of the authority has been directed. Or collective action in order to bring about change in it, as a justification for accusing opponents of the most serious charges such as treason and conspiracy against the security of the state. Their evidence in this is the political leaders who have been imprisoned for a period that has begun to prolong in cases that defense lawyers describe as empty and politicized to the core.
In the political reading, the opposition sees that President Saied, who accuses his opponents of seeking to seize the presidency, is equal to its seat as a ruler who does not reject his word and according to a constitutional text, stressing - that is, the opposition - that the Tunisian president does not tell the truth when he denies retreating from freedoms or using the judiciary and security to harass his opponents and those who disagree. With him, which ultimately led to an expected presidential election date that the current authority strives to tailor to suit the desires and ideas of President Saied, by excluding all serious names capable of truly competing with him and threatening his stay in the Carthage Palace.
However, indicators say; The opposition is considering its options regarding how to deal with this electoral stage, and the possibility of arriving at a candidate free of prosecution and capable of addressing the Tunisian street and mobilizing it behind a new change, based on the stifling economic crisis that the Saied years led to, which clearly affected the livelihood of Tunisians in long rows. While waiting for the availability of bread, milk, and other basic items, the state’s support for their prices evaporated, and they rose, thus exhausting the purchasing power of citizens.
Here the speculation turns again to ask:
Who do you think will compete with President Saied in the upcoming presidential elections?
Names... and other names
you can say; It is time to talk about what could be described as a possible exchange of names to compete with President Saied in the upcoming electoral contest, if it finds its way into implementation.
In this stock market, everyone sings loudly and throws his arrow, hoping to hit the minds and hearts of Tunisians, even from a hidden side, because revealing the road map may cause the cards of the potential candidate and the camp he represents to burn prematurely for one reason or another.
Without certainty and timidly, names are being circulated, such as Al-Mundhir Al-Zanaidi, a veteran politician who passed from the time of the late Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali until the era of the post-decade democratic transition, as a “statesman” coming from afar, and even if he did not officially announce his candidacy, the virtual pages She began to present it as a face for the future that could return Tunisia to “long-standing political traditions,” based on an equation between the prestige of the state and the democratic minimum, while giving priority to development issues and their heavy burdens, in a restoration of the vocabulary of the discourse of the era of the “Constitutional Democratic Rally.”
The man with this description seems close to benefiting from the audience of the leader of the Free Constitutional Party, who is currently in prison pending a judicial case, Abeer Moussa. He is also not far from the traditional network of influence and interests that search for a political formula in which “the wolf does not go hungry and the shepherd does not complain about it.”
This, in addition, seems to be accepted by an intersection of regional and international wills that can deal with those who remind them of the late President Ben Ali, and which seem to prefer a presidential system over a parliamentary one, but not with the absolute powers that Saied granted himself, which explains Washington’s persistence. Western capitals called on Saeed to modify his political path and pursue political partnership instead of tyranny by opinion and decision... but to no avail.
The major obstacle remaining in Zanaidi’s path if he decides to run is that he will be investigated along with other political leaders on suspicion of money laundering. Perhaps the man has not yet announced his candidacy, waiting for the judiciary to decide whether to allow or stop the man’s supposed presidential ambition.
Under the burden of judicial investigations lie many names, including Olfa Al-Hamidi, who early announced her candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections, to run what she says; It is a battle of legal prosecutions imposed on it by circles surrounding President Saied, sometimes begging him to put an end to all of this.
The same applies to a fair number of political figures, such as: Safi Saeed and Fadel Abdel Kafi, not to mention those previously arrested in cases of corruption and conspiracy against state security, such as the leader of the Ennahda movement, Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi, and the leader of the Democratic Movement, Ghazi Chaouachi, and others. They were charged with corruption and conspiracy to change the regime.
The opposition sees in this case something that reminds it of the Egyptian experience, which President Said never concealed his admiration for. In the land of Mahrousa, the elections were framed judicially and security-wise to allow a weak competitor.
President Saied and his supporters see all this narrative as a form of a political framework in which accusations are being circulated that revolve around the conflict over positions and potential gains, at a time when the Tunisian president is engaged in a fierce battle with the deepest circles of corruption and the strongest strongholds of the circles of influence in a desperate attempt to extricate the country from its deterioration and address... Its problems are addressed with a radical solution that does not merely reform the inherited pattern, but rather replaces it with a completely different one, which in their view constitutes the revolutionary essence of Said’s path, and the truest reflection of the demands of Tunisians in a state that expresses them and is at the service of their aspirations.
Out of the box
Whether you are a supporter of the decade of democratic transition or a supporter of the path imposed by President Saied, or even one who proposes a third way in between, you will come across a lot of talk about the Fund and what surrounds it in Tunisia, in a way that raises a question that may seem strange at first glance:
Is the electoral fund what will determine the political features in Tunisia in light of the results of the presidential elections scheduled for the current year?
Yes, if we consider those who believe that the electoral fund has not completely lost its credibility even in the eyes of Saied’s opponents, and they see him admitting very poor participation rates, in contrast to what all dictatorships in the world, past and present, do.
No, if we remember Saeed’s own talk about the role of corrupt money, malicious propaganda campaigns, and foreign-backed political machinations, and the opposition’s talk about the prior security and judicial framing of the political reality in the country until it gradually turned into a large barracks in which everyone must be level-headed and moderate according to those who describe it as critical. By the ruler by his command.
However, other approaches remind those who forget that the political path in Tunisia may be created by wills that know how to weave political slogans and headlines and weave alliances without contradicting the Fund. This is because all the electoral competitions witnessed in the decade of democratic transition were followed by agreements based on political quotas that were not spared. Other harsh criticisms.
This fact indicates a possibility that cannot be ruled out in any way, which is that there is some space for deals within which gains and concessions are exchanged, which may be concluded by parties floating on the political surface, and others who prefer to remain out of the spotlight, reserving their cards until the decisive time.
Parties experienced an unprecedented experience in the Arab world, which is to fold the path of democratic transition, using its slogans and declared goals, and projecting its gains through the ballot box, which is one of the most important tools of political action that guarantees political control and the peaceful transfer of power.
Opponents do not hide their astonishment at what they consider to be a cheap coup, carried out with the votes of voters and a broad party alliance, without the need to shed a single drop of blood, with a ease that allows opponents of the course the possibility of demonstrating and holding seminars within the logic of “You say what you want... and we do what we want.”
What prevents us from repeating that experience in its early stages with another electoral fund, whose political climate is engineered in a way that justifies a transfer of power towards an extension of President Saied or a change in the direction of another face that has also become a veteran by combining years of work within solid forces and others within government formations.
How could it not, when Ben Ali ruled recently, coming from the army establishment, before he moved to ministerial positions in which he took off his military uniform and put on a civilian one, so that a stifling crisis made him the man of salvation par excellence, the one who moved the country to a new scene with broad promises and a temporary legal outlet, enjoying... With internal and external consensus, he was given the best conditions for the launch of what was described at that time as a new era and blessed change.
The problem with all these readings issued by the opposition and the authority is that they add more fuel to the firewood of speculation, without anyone being able to be certain of one hypothesis or another and to be certain of one path at the expense of others, which confirms that President Saeed dissipated a little of the smoke from the scene in his meeting with the head of the electoral commission. Most of it still needs a mixture of time in crisis and critical choices, until the white thread is distinguished from the black thread in a country that is exhausted by politics, almost destroyed by the economy, and is in the middle of pressing regional and international bets.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.