Two major disasters have befallen Tunisia in recent days: the first is a blatant crushing of the law with an unprecedented level of arrogance and the second is a deliberate abortion of any hope for peaceful change through free presidential elections.
These are two painful blows because what is happening is that the incumbent President Kais Saied is clinging to power, no matter the cost, no matter how much he abuses the law, and no matter how much he crushes the desire for the presidential elections to be a peaceful way out of the severe hardship that the country is experiencing politically, economically and socially. The first blow was the announcement by the Independent High Authority for Elections, whose members were chosen by Saied, unlike the system in the past when they were elected by parliament, stating that it refused, for very weak reasons, to comply with the rulings of the Administrative Court, which decided to reinstate three candidates to the presidential race. It did so despite the explicit law that stipulates that only the Administrative Court can rule on candidacy disputes, and that its rulings are final and binding and cannot be appealed.
The electoral commission proved that its loyalty is to those who appointed it, and to those who allowed its President, Farouk Bouaskar, to have the privileges of a minister, and not to the supremacy of the law or the necessity of neutrality and independence. In a rare legal consensus, all legal experts and university professors agreed that what the body did was a flagrant violation of the law. The independent watchdog organisation I Watch, concerned with combating financial and administrative corruption and supporting transparency, said the electoral commission’s inflexibility in implementing final judicial rulings is “a clear blow to the foundations of the rule of law and institutions” and that it is “fighting its final battles for survival under the protection of the current authority, as it realises that any change in the balance of power and in the form of government will lead it to face accountability for all the violations it committed during its term.”
The commission that everyone is now demanding the departure of is also the cause of the second blow to Tunisia and Tunisians, which is the most dangerous and painful blow. This blow came in the form of extinguishing the flame of hope within Tunisians in the past weeks when the general popular mood changed from one of despair regarding the possibility of holding real competitive presidential elections and resignation to the fact that President Saied is going to serve a new presidential term, regardless of the turnout and the percentage of votes he will win.
READ: HRW calls on Tunisia to stop its ‘political interference’ in presidential election
Hope had returned when the Administrative Court decided to reinstate those who were eliminated by the commission, especially since they are from different backgrounds. It was believed that the presidential elections would be competitive and would ensure a peaceful transition of power that would provide a democratic alternative to the years of populism, failure and incompetence of Saied’s rule. His rule failed to solve any of the country’s problems, but rather contributed to their deterioration, while raising his voice above everyone else’s, explaining everything with conspiracies.
However, the matter has not yet reached the point of popular anger translated into angry protests in the streets because the administrative court does not intend to surrender, nor do the three eliminated candidates, nor the political and civil forces that do not accept the imposition of a fait accompli by force and not by law.
The bitter truth that everyone has realised is that things would not have reached this level of violating the law if everyone had stood up to Kais Saied’s coup against the constitution in July 2021, because the failure to do so is what encouraged him to commit all his subsequent violations, leading up to this latest coup. However, the hope for change remains as long as no one stands with Saied now, other than the authority and its agencies, and not the law or the popular opinion.
It is both funny and sad that the constitution that Saied wrote himself stated: “We are establishing the focus of a new constitutional system based not only on the rule of law but on the community of law so that the legal rules are a true and honest expression of the will of the people, so they internalise them and strive to implement them and confront all those who transgress them or try to go against them.”
It is really angering that the head of the electoral commission is a judge, and that the head of state who stands behind him and refuses to hand over the presidency to “traitors and spies” as he said with his own tongue, taught constitutional law at Tunisian universities for 30 years!
This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on 3 September 2024…Read more by Middle East Monitor
