Tunisia: Opposition Presidential Candidate Arrested

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Facts

• Ahead of the Oct. 6 Tunisian presidential election, opposition candidate Ayachi Zammel was arrested on Monday on allegations of fabricating campaign endorsements. Zammel is one of two individuals approved to challenge incumbent Pres. Kais Saied^[1]
• Besides Zammel, a liberal figure, and Zouhair Maghzaoui, from the left-wing People's Movement, fourteen others had their bids to join the race denied by Tunisia's electoral commission. Three of these successfully appealed these rulings in court, but the electoral commission declined to reinstate them.^[1][2]
• In response to the arrest, Zammel's campaign manager said the charges are meant 'to exclude him from the election.' To appear on the ballot, a candidate needs the signatures of 10K voters, 10 members of parliament, or 40 local officials, with the government accusing Zammel and others of falsifying these figures.^[3]
• Saied first won the presidency in 2019, and in 2021 suspended parliament and drafted a new constitution which granted him full control of the army and total executive power.^[4]
• The chief of the country's electoral commission, in rejecting the appeals of the disqualified candidates, said that they cannot approve candidates accused of falsifying signatures or of holding dual citizenships.^[5]
• Human Rights Watch has said that at least eight presidential candidates have been imprisoned this cycle, including disqualified challenger Abdellatif Mekki, serving an eight month sentence for falsifying endorsements.^[6]

Sources: ^[1]RFI, ^[2]Reuters, ^[3]Al Jazeera, ^[4]BBC News, ^[5]The Arabweekly and ^[6]Human Rights Watch.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Al Jazeera. Tunisia under Saied has become an authoritarian state, as he dashes the dreams of democracy that the country had after the Arab Spring. Since coming to power, Saied has made blatant power grabs and has consolidated his control over the country, with these disqualifications and arrests of opposition figures being prime examples. These upcoming elections will be neither free nor fair.
• Narrative B, as provided by La Presse de Tunisie. Saied's reforms were desperately needed to ensure the country doesn't fall into the cycles of violence and stagnation that preceded his rule. The widespread acceptance of these reforms is perhaps reflected in the inability of opposition figures to garner signatures without resorting to fraud, while they make baseless claims of obstruction. The noise made by the opposition is clearly sour grapes.

Predictions