Election in Tunisia: voter turnout at nine percent – politics

Khaled Saad is sitting with his wife Mouna and their 6-year-old daughter in a street restaurant in front of the Zitouna Mosque in the medina of Tunis. In the narrow streets, there is more hustle and bustle than on normal weekends because of the unusual temperature of 25 degrees for December. Maybe it’s because of today’s date, December 17, that so many families like the Saads are out and about. The holiday commemorates Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation and the start of the revolution 12 years ago. The young Tunisian had doused himself with petrol because of the arbitrary police behavior in his hometown of Sidi Bousid and died a few weeks later. Anger at rampant police and political corruption swept the country and led to the fall of several regimes in North Africa.

President Kais Saied has deliberately scheduled parliamentary elections for December 17th. The 64-year-old propagates the continuation of the revolution and stoically implements his project of grassroots democracy, in which political parties only play a minor role. Saied always justifies the end of the much-praised constitution created by many social actors in 2014 with the danger posed by the Islamists associated with the Ennahda party and the corrupt business elite.

In fact, the majority of Tunisians celebrated his coup against parliament in the summer of 2021 on the streets. Due to the inaction of the parliamentarians despite the highest number of corona infections in the world, he simply declared them a danger to national security.

“I also supported him at the time,” says Khaled Saad. “The fights, broadcast live on television, between Abir Moussi’s former regime supporters and Sheifedinne Makhlouf, the leader of the Islamists, were undignified and unpatriotic. We don’t want that kind of democracy.”

Armed soldiers in front of the polling stations – and hardly any voters inside

The 47-year-old thinks highly of the fact that Saied rejects homosexuality and supports the death penalty. “We have to rebuild Tunisia with our values,” says Saad. Like many others, he doesn’t believe that Kais Saied is the right president for this. “As an entrepreneur, I earn 4,000 dinars a month, much more than many of my friends, and yet I can barely make ends meet. And Saied hasn’t even mentioned the word economy since the coup.” The monthly income of the equivalent of 1,200 euros was not enough to buy his older daughter’s school books, which until a few years ago were provided by the state, says Mouna Saad. She has not voted once since 2011. “Everything has gotten worse in Tunisia in recent years. Saied is not a politician and apparently has no solutions – and yet he wields all power.”

Kais Saied casts his vote.

(Photo: dpa/dpa)

A few hundred meters away, just below the monument to Tunisia’s independence, three soldiers armed with automatic rifles are guarding the entrance to a school. Like all schools in the country, the Pacha-Gymnasium has also been converted into a polling station. Numerous election workers have pinned the names of the 900 registered voters in the “Kasbah” constituency to pin boards. As in previous years, the organization of the state electoral authority ISIE is running smoothly. Plainclothes police officers and poll workers in vests stand around in the classrooms, a little bored, and voters rarely stray onto the school grounds. It’s mostly older people who come in one by one. “I lived under Ben Ali for most of my life,” says Mohamed Mahmoud. “Voting is a duty for me.”

But when the 65-year-old comes out of the voting booth, he seems a bit disturbed. “I hardly knew any candidates and chose someone I knew from school.”

More than 1,000 candidates applied for the 161 seats in Saied’s new parliament. Most are newcomers to politics, and few have campaigned in recent weeks. They were not allowed to speak to foreign journalists before the election and were not allowed to be financed by parties. In the future, the deputies will only have a representative function and can be removed by decree from the President.

In Kabaria, too, the polling stations are deserted. The run-down district in the south of Tunis is actually known for its many Saied supporters. The poll workers are clearly uncomfortable with the low turnout. Three young men have come to al Quardia school to vote for a mutual friend who has ventured into politics. “We need new faces,” says one of the early 20s.

After the polling stations were closed, a spokesman for the electoral authority announced that the turnout was less than nine percent.

The independent Tunisian election observer initiative Mourakiboun reports on attempted vote-buying in the central Tunisian cities of Gafsa, Sbeitla and the small town of Nabeul. There were also isolated cases of electoral fraud during the last vote. Usually the moderate Islamists of the Ennahda party or former regime supporters were blamed, Kais Saied’s main opponent. The independent election observers from the American Carter Center and the African Union want to comment on the elections on Monday.

“The low turnout and the allegations of vote-buying by individual candidates make Saied’s project seem pointless,” said Khaled Saad after the polling stations in the medina were closed.

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