To ensure he wins Sunday’s election, Tunisia’s president has effectively eliminated his opponents before the first vote is cast.

Undeterred by mounting criticism at home and abroad, Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed continues to strangle the country’s fragile young democracy (if it can still be called a democracy). This Sunday (6 October) he will run for a second term of office against the only two candidates permitted to stand against him, one of whom is in prison.

Last month the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE), which now falls under the president’s office, confirmed only Saïed and two former Members of Parliament, Zouhair Maghzaoui and Ayachi Zammel, as presidential candidates. In August this year, the ISIE disqualified 14 other prospective candidates for various reasons. Seven other possible candidates couldn’t file their paperwork as they didn’t get clearance from the Ministry of Interior.

‘The electoral commission has been under the control of Saïed since he restructured it in April 2022; its seven members are now nominated by the president,’ Human Rights Watch observed. ‘Instead of ensuring the integrity of the upcoming election, the commission has intervened to skew the ballot in favour of Saïed.’

The Administrative Court, which theoretically has exclusive jurisdiction over electoral candidacy disputes and whose decisions should be legally binding, last month overruled the ISIE. It reinstated the candidacies of Abdellatif Mekki, a former health minister; Mondher Zenaïdi, a former minister under then-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali; and former MP Imed Daïmi. But last Friday, Parliament, tightly controlled by Saïed’s party, passed legislation stripping the court of the power to overturn that and any other decisions by the election authority.

That left only Saïed, Maghzaoui and Zammel in the race. But Zammel cannot be considered a real contender. On 1 October, days before the election, a Tunisian criminal court sentenced him to 12 years in prison on charges of false documentation of his registration as candidate. Head of the opposition Azimoun party, Zammel was already in jail serving two previous sentences handed down to him over the past two weeks. The others were also dubious and bureaucratic.

So that effectively leaves only Maghzaoui opposing Saïed, and he is widely suspected of being a token candidate who only entered the race to lend it credibility. He has previously supported the president.

Abir Moussi, Free Constitutional Party leader, has been in prison since last year on charges of harming public security. Another prominent politician, Lotfi Mraihi, was jailed this year on charges of vote buying in 2019. Both had said they would run in October but were prevented from submitting their applications from jail.

A criminal court jailed four other potential candidates in August and imposed lifetime bans from running for office.

The Tunisian General Labour Union, Tunisian Association of Constitutional Law, President of the Union of Administrative Judges Refka Mbarki, Association of Tunisian Magistrates and National Union of Tunisian Journalists have condemned the electoral commission and government for overriding the administrative court.

‘Tunisians are about to vote for president against a backdrop of increased repression of dissent, muzzling of the media, and continued attacks on judicial independence,’ Human Rights Watch said. ‘Since the start of the electoral period on July 14, authorities have prosecuted, convicted, or detained at least nine prospective candidates. … Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections.’

Saïed, ironically a constitutional law professor before being democratically elected president in 2019, has systematically unravelled Tunisia’s constitutional democracy since then, arrogating ever greater powers to himself. He started by dissolving a fractious Parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree. He fired the prime minister, provincial governors and many judges. Saïed justified these actions by contending that the political class was corrupt and incapable of governing in the interests of Tunisia.

He also played the familiar ‘foreign interference’ card. In Parliament last week, pro-Saïed legislators accused Administrative Court judges of being puppets acting on behalf of unnamed foreign interests.

Saïed’s populism was initially quite persuasive to many, perhaps even most ordinary Tunisians. They were fatigued by the political turbulence that had rocked the country – and distracted attention from a limping economy – since autocrat Ben Ali was overthrown in 2011.

For some time, many Tunisians and foreign observers gave Saïed the benefit of the doubt, believing, or hoping, he would restore democratic rights once he had stabilised the country’s politics and economy. But Saïed, his constitutional law expertise notwithstanding, seems to be firmly dragging Tunisia down the familiar downward path back to autocracy.

Meanwhile he has failed to make much impact on an economy still feeling the aftermath of Covid-19 and the repercussions of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

And so internal opposition is growing. Oppositionists have called for protests on Friday ahead of the elections.

The International Crisis Group says in a new report that Tunisian sources have told it that Saïed’s recent crackdown on the opposition stemmed from fears that he’d fail to win a share of the vote at least equivalent to the almost 73% he won in 2019 – or even lose. This would have undermined the popular mandate he claimed to justify his harsh actions. The report says it had seen unpublished polls that estimated him winning only 20% to 25% of the vote in the first round. With no credible opponent still standing, Saïed now seems to have obviated that problem.

‘We are witnessing the capture of the state days before the vote,’ political activist Chaima Issa told Reuters. ‘We are at the peak of absurdity and one-man rule.’

But these protests will clearly make no difference.

Outside the country, Saïed has largely escaped censure or pressure. He appears to have camouflaged his power grab with enough of a veneer of bogus constitutionality and legality to avoid criticism by the African Union, despite its theoretical condemnation of constitutional coups. And his cooperation with European governments in controlling the influx of immigrants seems to have blunted criticism from that quarter.

Having paved the way to clear victory, Saïed will undoubtedly win re-election and seems likely to continue stifling democracy and snuffing out the Arab Spring in the very country where it blossomed in 2011 – and the only country where it had survived.

The danger is that such a blatant manipulation of the democratic process could provoke unrest in the country. By emulating Ben Ali’s behaviour, Saïed might risk emulating his fate.

Written by Peter Fabricius, Consultant, ISS Pretoria