Tunisia- Since the Tunisian President announced Qais Saeed The presidential elections are scheduled for October 6th. Many figures have expressed their intention to run for the presidency. It was not expected that the expression of desire to compete for the seat of Carthage Palace would lead to the rejection of most candidates’ files.
Those who were not treated fairly by the Independent High Authority for Elections went to the Administrative Court to appeal the decision to reject their file, but the court’s decisions raised a lot of “surprise and ridicule” for the justifications it gave for rejecting the appeals.
Before the election date was announced, a number of politicians revealed their intention to run in the race – including prisoners – including Issam Chebbi, Secretary-General ofFor the Republican PartyAbir Moussi, President of the Free Constitutional Party, and Ghazi Chaouachi, former Secretary-General of the Democratic Current Party.
to reject
Lawyers applied to the electoral commission to obtain popular endorsement forms for their clients’ candidacies, but their requests were rejected on the grounds of “not presenting a special power of attorney from the candidate to obtain the form.” The law regulating the Tunisian legal profession authorizes a lawyer to represent his client in obtaining all documents from all bodies and institutions, including the electoral commission, according to lawyers.
In this context, the official spokesman for the Republican Party, Wissam Al-Saghir, told Al Jazeera Net that “the intention to exclude their party’s candidate, Issam Chebbi, was clear by requiring a special power of attorney to withdraw the endorsement form.”
He added that it is impossible to achieve this as it requires a series of procedures, the least of which is bringing a notary public into the prison, which is not realistically possible, according to him, noting that Abir Moussi was refused a special power of attorney, which confirms the intention of exclusion, according to him.
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According to Al Sagheer, the general climate in Tunisia He confirms concerns about the current authority’s intention to hold elections that do not meet the minimum requirements of integrity and pluralism. He said that the first stage of political exclusion relied on arrests of a number of political leaders and symbols, then candidates were excluded through an electoral law “tailored to the size and the fabrication of flimsy legal files to prevent a number of them.”
In his opinion, whatever the results, the current ruling system “will not regain the political legitimacy it lost by arresting and imprisoning its opponents, in addition to losing electoral legitimacy after recording this number of electoral violations and breaches committed.”
Although a number of candidates were able to obtain the popular endorsement form, they announced their withdrawal immediately after announcing their candidacy, due to most of them clashing with what they called “unacceptable conditions” stipulated by the electoral law, including the condition of collecting 10,000 endorsements, half of which must be distributed among 10 electoral districts, with 500 endorsements in each district.
A tough task
Ahmed Al-Nafati, Deputy Secretary-General of the Action and Achievement Party and Director of the Campaign of Presidential Candidate Abdul Latif Al-Makki, told Al Jazeera Net that the task of collecting 500 endorsements after increasing the number of districts from 27 to 161, with a much smaller geographical area and population density, is a difficult and arduous task for the candidates, especially with the limited time given to do so.
Obtaining a criminal record card, known as “Card No. 3,” was also one of the obstacles that caused a number of candidates to withdraw, and another number to go to the administrative judiciary because of their inability to obtain it despite submitting requests in the required time to the relevant security authorities.
The process of collecting endorsements was accompanied by legal proceedings against some candidates, which contributed to increasing doubts about the availability of a suitable environment for candidacy without fear of prosecution.
This was confirmed by Al-Nafati, who pointed out that his party’s Secretary-General faced several cases as soon as he announced his candidacy, as he “was dragged into what is known as the case of the death of Al-Jilani Al-Dabbousi, and was charged with premeditated murder despite having no connection to the case, only 5 days after announcing his candidacy.”
Later, a judicial decision was issued preventing Al-Maki from appearing on social media and the media, and preventing him from traveling and leaving the territorial borders of his place of residence, until the investigation with him is completed. The organization said Human Rights Watch Tunisian authorities have “tried, convicted or imprisoned at least 8 potential presidential candidates.”
As soon as the Secretary-General of the Popular Republican Party, Lotfi Mraihi, announced his intention to compete for the presidency, the authorities arrested him in a case related to suspicions of financial corruption, and the judiciary issued a sentence against him to 8 months in prison and a lifetime ban on running for office.
An in absentia ruling was also issued against candidate Safi Saeed, sentencing him to 4 months in prison on charges of falsifying endorsements in the 2019 elections. This is the same charge that presidential candidate Naji Jalloul discovered was issued against him in absentia, sentencing him to 6 months in prison since May 2024.
On August 5, the Court of First Instance in Tunis sentenced five potential presidential candidates (Abdellatif Mekki, Nizar Chaari, Mourad Massoudi, Mohamed Adel Daou, and Leila Hammami) to eight months in prison and a lifetime ban from running for office, on charges of “offering cash or in-kind gifts with the intent to influence voters.”
Seventeen candidates submitted official candidacy files, and a number of them – including Mondher Zenaidi, Imad Daimi, Al-Makki, Dhaker Lahidhab, and Ayachi Zamal – confirmed that they were able to meet the condition of collecting the required popular endorsements. The commission announced that it would accept Zamal’s popular endorsements only, while it rejected the rest of the applications after verifying the validity of the submitted endorsements, according to a statement by the commission’s head, Farouk Bouasker.
Even the accepted presidential candidate, Ayachi Zemal, faces threats of imprisonment and being banned from running on charges of “forging popular endorsements that imprisoned a volunteer in his campaign.”
procedural nightmare
Ahmed Al-Nafati described the process of auditing the endorsements by the Election Commission as a “procedural nightmare,” stressing that it had dropped a large number of endorsements for reasons that, in his opinion, “some were formal and others were illogical.”
Al-Nafati added that among the formal errors that caused the authority to reject the recommendations were the lack of consistency in the order of the names of the recommenders between the digital version and the paper recommendations, as well as the errors contained in some of the non-mandatory information included in the recommendation form, such as the mother’s name, date of birth, and the issuance of the national identification card (ID).
The authority also dropped some recommendations, the same speaker continued, due to the difference in the date of issuance of the identity cards, which were approved by the dates recorded with them since the last elections, “without taking into consideration the change that might occur to this date once this document is renewed, which he considered an “illogical reason.”
Since the announcement of the list of accepted candidates by the Election Commission, 6 of the rejected candidates have submitted their requests to the Administrative Court to appeal the Commission’s decisions. The court, in the first phase of the litigation, upheld the Commission’s opinion, announcing the rejection of all appeals submitted to it.
Candidate Imad Al-Daimi announced that the commission rejected his appeal on the grounds that it was submitted in a digital, non-editable PDF. Commenting on the decision, Al-Daimi said he was “certain that the rejection was the result of unprecedented external pressure.” He added that “the ball is now in the court’s hands, with the court’s senior judges having built a positive image of the court and its rulings over the past 20 years.”
The court officially received 6 appeals against its ruling to uphold the decisions of the Independent High Authority for Elections, and the ruling will be issued no later than August 30.
