MONITORING DESK
TUNIS: Polls are opened on Saturday in the Tunisian parliamentary election that will decide 18th President Kais Saied’s grip on power, capping what his opponents denounce as a march to one-person rule over a country that shook off dictatorship in 2011.
Taking place twelve years to the day after vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in the act of protest that sparked the Arab Spring, the vote is starting to be boycotted by the political parties which have accused Saied of mounting a coup.
Voters would be choosing a parliament defanged mainly by a new constitution. It approved with a low turnout in the July referendum that Saied engineered to shift Tunisia back toward the presidential system.
Tunisian parliament
Nejib Chebbi, the head of an anti-Saied coalition, including Ennahda, has labeled the election a still-born mockery.
Saied shut the last parliament down the previous year, surrounding the legislature with tanks and assuming near total official.
Saied, a former lecturer of law who was a political independent when the elected president in 2019, described the election as part of a roadmap for eliminating the chaos and corruption he said afflicted Tunisia under the previous system.
An election is taking place against economic issues fueling poverty, leading many to attempt the dangerous journey to Europe aboard smugglers’ boats.
Boycotted by the Oppositions Parties
With the main political parties absent, 1,058 candidates, only 120 women, are running for 161 seats.
For 10 of those 7 in Tunisia and 3 decided by expatriate voters, there is just 1 candidate. A further 7 seats decided by expatriate voters have no candidates running at all.
