Tunisia’s Autocratic Leader Is Poised to Steamroll to Election Victory
The New York Times
President Kais Saied, who has jailed opponents and consolidated power, is almost certain to win Sunday’s election in the North African country, the birthplace of the Arab Spring movement.
For many Tunisians, there seems to be little point to the presidential election on Sunday. There are barely any candidate posters, no debates and not much suspense. The president, Kais Saied, appears so sure of victory that he has not even issued any policy proposals.
His leading challenger is in prison, serving three separate sentences on what his lawyers say are falsified charges, the longest sentence lasting 12 years. At least eight other would-be candidates are in jail or under a form of house arrest, and others have been disqualified from the ballot.
More than a decade after mass protests toppled the country’s longtime dictator, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, prompting other Arab Spring revolts across the Middle East, few in Tunisia still believe they live in a democracy. The string of punishments for the president’s critics and his ever-tightening hold over the election process in recent months have left little doubt that Mr. Saied’s one-man rule is here to stay.
“He’s willing to do anything it takes to stay in power — dividing Tunisians, prosecuting them, accusing them,” said Souhaib Fercheche, 30, a senior campaigner at I Watch, a civic watchdog formed by young Tunisians in the heady, hopeful days after the country’s 2011 revolution.
The protests that year ushered in a decade of embryonic democracy for Tunisia. To outsiders especially, it was the only success story to emerge from the Arab Spring. But Tunisians who had demanded better opportunities and a cleaned-up government never received what they thought democracy had promised.
