Only three candidates are competing for the 2024 Tunisian presidential election after all: the incumbent President Kais Saied (Independent), Al-Ayachi Zammel (Azimoun Party), and Zouhair Maghzaoui (Echaab, or the People’s Movement). The opposition has blamed the High Independent Elections Authority (ISIE) of bias in Saied’s favour, as it did not raise the number of candidates as expected. Observers anticipate low voter turnout as large swathes of the public merely want the elections to end so that the government can return to focusing on their deteriorating living conditions.

When it announced its list of three candidates on 10 August, the ISIE explained that all other applicants had been disqualified due to lack of sufficient endorsements. Three of those disqualified – Mondher Zenaidi, Abdel-Latif Mekki, and Imed Daïmi – filed appeals with the Administrative Court which, in late August, ruled in their favour. However, when the ISIE announced the final list of candidates, that did not include them. The ISIE claimed this was because it had not received the required notification from the Administrative Court.

The ISIE had disqualified 14 applicants. Most were hit with accusations and lawsuits charging them with falsifying endorsements and corruption, which prevented the ISIE from approving their candidacies. Under the Tunisian constitution and Tunisian electoral laws, persons wishing to run for president must obtain endorsements from 10 members of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People (ARP), 40 elected local officials, or 10,000 voters from electoral districts across Tunisia.

The presidential elections have been set for 6 October. By law the campaign period in Tunisia is 21 days, from 14 September to 4 October. This is followed by a day of campaign silence before the polls. Tunisians abroad will be able to vote on 4, 5 and 6 October. The campaign period abroad extends from 12 September to 2 October, with the campaign silence falling on 3 October.

“The [ISIE] is the only body constitutionally empowered to ensure the integrity of the elections,”  said ISIE President Farouk Bouasker in a press conference on 2 September, after the final list of candidates was confirmed. His statement sparked an outcry among opposition parties, activists and human rights organisations at home and abroad. They called on the ISIE to reverse its decision, respect rule of law, and heed the Administrative Court ruling.

On 3 September, the ISIE asked Saied, Zammel and Maghzaoui to submit the lists of their polling station representatives by no later than 28 September. The following day, it published the campaign spending limits, cautioning the candidates against violating the campaign financing laws and regulations that are intended to ensure the transparency and fairness of the electoral process. Nevertheless, opposition voices continue to question the fairness of the electoral process, warning that the ISIE’s actions could delegitimise the elections. The government has not prevented the opposition from freely expressing its views, though judicial authorities have levelled charges of corruption and foreign funding against some opposition leaders.

Though some Tunisian opposition criticises President Saied for his “undemocratic” behaviour yet, according to observers, “democratic” is a concept that much of the opposition had proved unable to comprehend and practise during the decade before the president stepped in to mend the system’s flaws. While opposition forces have a vocal media presence, this has not translated into a significant grassroots presence, either: this lack of a support base on the ground can be seen in other Arab countries too.

It is because of lack of grassroots support that most of those applicants were unable to collect the required endorsements, opening themselves up to allegations of fraud and corruption, many of which have been sustained by the Tunisian judiciary. In the view of some critics, for some opposition figures, running for president was merely a propaganda stunt aimed at self-promotion by assuming a defiant posture.

The voice of the Islamist Ennahda Party has been conspicuously absent among the opposition. Since its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, was sentenced to three years in prison earlier this year, the party’s leadership has remained silent as though acknowledging that much of the public and many political forces were correct in blaming Ennahda for the current state of the country. During its years in power, Ennahda failed to turn the economy around or deliver in any tangible way on the progress to which Tunisians aspired after the 2011 Revolution.

Meanwhile, the opposition’s criticism of the president, the ISIE and the electoral process seems to resonate only within opposition circles. The general public remains focused on cost of living, employment, social security and other bread and butter concerns. Living conditions have gone from bad to worse in recent years, in large measure due to the succession of global crises. Tunisians have therefore grown weary of the opposition forces’ political bickering and games of one-upmanship, holding politicians responsible for squandering opportunities for development.

On 25 July 2021, President Saied, who was elected in 2019, dismissed parliament, suspended the constitution and instituted a series of “corrective measures” to end years of government paralysis. He then oversaw the passing of a new constitution which established a presidential system granting the executive broader powers than under the previous parliamentary system. Saied, himself originally a jurist and professor of constitutional law, believed that the latter system shackled the government in political party squabbling, preventing it from functioning effectively.

Saied’s reforms resulted in accusations of authoritarianism from political factions that now moved into the opposition. However, he has managed to ride out dissent and propel Tunisia forward economically and socio-politically, despite formidable challenges. Improvements to their standards of living is what concerns Tunisian voters the most. They have felt let down by the forces that are now in the opposition and are only too aware of the impacts of unconstrained partisan fighting on their economic well-being, social peace, and national security. Regardless of how they stand on Kais Saied himself, who is expected to win on 6 October, the priority remains stability and progress.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 12 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly