Tunisia presidential election: Who is running and what is at stake?

On October 6, Tunisians will head to the polls for the first round of a presidential election that opposition critics say is rigged in favour of President Kais Saied and could sound the death knell for Tunisia’s democracy.

Just two candidates have been approved to run against the incumbent in Sunday’s poll: left-wing nationalist Zouhair Magzhaoui, who is widely regarded as a paper candidate supportive of Saied, and the jailed leader of the liberal Azimoun party, Ayachi Zammel.

Weeks before the election, Zammel received two prison sentences – one for 20 months and another for six months – for falsifying paperwork relating to his candidacy. On October 1, he was sentenced to a further 12 years in prison in four cases related to voter endorsements. He has been behind bars since early September and is expected to remain there during the election. He says the charges against him are false and politically motivated.

In addition to Zammel, many of the country’s better-known politicians and party leaders who hoped to oppose Saied in the election have either been jailed or barred from running by the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) – a supposedly independent electoral commission that many say became an extension of the presidency under the wide-ranging reforms introduced by Saied since his power grab of July 2021.

The ISIE declared 14 of the 17 candidates who applied to participate in the election “ineligible”. Three of them – former ministers Imed Daimi and Mondher Znaidi and opposition leader Abdellatif Mekki – won their appeals against the ISIE’s decision before Tunisia’s Administrative Court, which is widely seen as the North African country’s last independent judicial body, since Saied dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council and dismissed dozens of judges in 2022.

Yet, the ISIE dismissed the ruling and declared that the approved candidate list, including just the three names – Magzhaoui, Zammel and Saied – was final.

Soon after the ISIE’s decision in late September, the Saied-controlled General Assembly passed a new law officially stripping the Administrative Court of all electoral authority, effectively ending independent judicial oversight of candidate selection and other election-related issues.

The electoral turmoil, and the undermining of the Administrative Court, have helped trigger the return of public protest to the streets of the Tunisian capital, Tunis.

Activists from across the political spectrum have joined demonstrations calling for free and fair elections as well as an end to the crackdown on civil liberties and the criminalisation of any speech critical of Saeid and his supporters. The widespread protests were the first – other than those in support of Palestine – that the country has witnessed in several years.

However, the recent bouts of public unrest and open criticism of the president remain exceptions to the rule. Many critical voices in the country have been silenced through laws and policies designed to curtail free expression. The introduction and frequent application of Decree 54, a measure criminalising any online speech subsequently deemed false, for example, led to the imprisonment of many journalists and online critics and helped shape a media landscape broadly supportive of the president.

Meanwhile, President Saied continues to enjoy support from some Tunisians who remain disillusioned with traditional politics and politicians and view him as an antidote to what they see as the source of the country’s many problems: self-interested and publicity-hungry politicians who put their interests and the interests of their parties over the needs of the people.

There are also many Tunisians who consider the system broken and say they are no longer interested in participating in electoral politics. In Tunisia’s 2022 parliamentary runoffs, just 11 percent of registered voters turned out to vote.

Against this backdrop of widespread public disillusionment, a highly controlled media and a field of just three candidates, few doubt Sunday’s vote will result in anything other than an overwhelming victory for the incumbent.

Let’s take a closer look at the three candidates:

Kais Saied: The incumbent

Party: Independent

Age: 66

Background:

A former law professor, Saied had no political or campaigning experience before he was elected president in 2019. He won that election on a ticket to end corruption and promote equity, largely buoyed by a groundswell of support from young voters. He promised to promote social justice, while saying access to healthcare and water are part of national security and that education would “immunise” youth against “extremism”. Before the run-off in that election, he refused to campaign against his then-imprisoned opponent, Nabil Karoui, saying it would “give him an unfair advantage”.

Once elected president, however, Saied assumed a much less democratic stance. In July 2021, he shuttered parliament and dismissed the prime minister, beginning to rule by decree while overseeing the dramatic rewriting of the constitution. A new parliament, with greatly reduced powers, was reintroduced in March 2023, but is yet to offer any meaningful opposition to the president.

Throughout his first term as president, alongside introducing wide-reaching reforms that helped him consolidate power, he also waged lawfare against all his political opponents, but especially self-styled Muslim Democrats from the Ennahdha Party. In April 2023, the party’s co-founder, leader and speaker of the former parliament, Rached Ghannouchi, was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison on charges of incitement against state authorities. He later received another three-year sentence over accusations that his party received foreign contributions. Many other high-profile party members received fines and prison sentences on similar charges. In September 2024, at least 97 Ennahdha members were arrested and presented with conspiracy charges and other charges under the “counterterrorism” law.

Rights groups have been vocal in their criticism of Saied, lambasting his crackdown on civil society, his criminalisation of speech critical of his administration and the brutal treatment of irregular Black migrants and refugees under his rule.

Ayachi Zammel

Party: Azimoun

Age: 47

Background:

The previously little-known Ayachi Zammel remains on the ballot paper despite being imprisoned.

Though unusual, this is not the first time a Tunisian politician has fought a presidential battle from a jail cell. In 2019, Kais Saied’s final round challenger, media magnate Nabil Karoui, oversaw almost his entire campaign from prison after being detained on corruption charges. Karoui later absconded while on bail and his whereabouts remain unknown.

Before his arrest in early September, Zammell’s political career was relatively straightforward.

Since entering politics as a member of former Prime Minister Youssef Chahed’s Tahya Tounes party in 2019, Zammel has pursued a generally centrist, liberal line and has avoided the extremes of Tunisian politics.

After quitting Tahya Tounes over “internal differences” in 2020, he joined the National Bloc as an independent MP in October 2020, and went on to serve as chairman of the Health and Social Affairs Committee during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like many, Zammell initially welcomed the dissolution of the parliament in 2022, eight months after President Saied had suspended it. However, by September of the same year, he had grown critical of Saied’s actions.

In 2022, Zammell founded the Azimoum party and served as its leader until August 2024, when he resigned from the role to stand as a candidate for president.

Zouhair Magzhaoui

Party: Echaab Movement (People’s Movement)

Age: 58

Background:

Originally a member of the People’s Unionist Progressive Movement, Magzhaoui has led the Echaab movement since 2013 after the two parties merged the year before. The party’s previous leader, Mohamed Brahmi, resigned upon the merger and was assassinated two weeks later.

Brahmi’s assassination, like that of fellow left-wing politician Chokri Belaid, assassinated the same year, remains unsolved.

Despite being a member of the Tunisian parliament, the Assembly of the Representatives of the People (ARP), from 2014 until its dissolution in 2022, Magzhaoui has repeatedly defended the president’s actions, including his redrafting of the constitution, describing them as necessary to protect the state from corruption and mismanagement by the country’s political elite.

Speaking on local radio two years after what many describe as the president’s auto coup, he told listeners: “July 25 [the date used to refer to the president’s power grab] was hardly a whim of Kaïs Saïed but a satisfaction of the will of the people.”

Magzhaoui has been highly critical of political Islam in general and specifically the Ennahdha party, which he described in 2021 as corrupt and serving “the interests of the mafias and lobbies”. Previously, during the final session of the former parliament, he twice lent his signature to motions of censure against Parliamentary Speaker Ghannouchi.

A social conservative, Maghzaoui has criticised Tunisia’s small LGBTQ community and has often aligned with socially conservative positions in opposition to civil society organisations calling for human rights reforms.