The country must elect a new parliament on Saturday during a ballot widely shunned by Tunisians and boycotted by numerous political parties.
MO12345LEMONDE With AFP
Tunisians are called to the polls on Saturday December 17 to elect their deputies. An election largely boycotted by the majority of the parties of the country represented during the previous mandates, opposed to most of the initiatives which followed the coup de force of Kaïs Saïed, on July 25, 2021.
The polling stations where more than 9 million voters are convened, opened at 7 am (8 am in Paris). The ballot takes place after three weeks of a dull campaign, with very few posters of candidates in the streets and in the absence of serious debates, when the population seems above all concerned about the cost of the Life.
A parliament with limited skills
A new room of 161 deputies (instead of 217 during previous mandates) must replace that which Mr. Saïed froze on July 25, 2021, after months of blockages from the institutions in place since the fall of President Zine El- Abidine Ben Ali, during the revolt of the “Arab Spring” of 2011. The parliament from the legislative elections, after a second round organized by early March, will be endowed with very limited skills under the new Constitution that Mr. Saïed a Adopted this summer in a referendum marked by a massive abstention (almost 70 %).
Elected in the two -round uninominal election and no longer on lists, future deputies will not be able to dismiss the president, control the government’s action or censor it. It will take ten deputies to propose a law and the president will have the priority to have his own adopted. They will also not benefit from any immunity and may be revoked from their functions, under certain conditions, by voters.
inflation of 10 %
According to the Tunisian Observatory for the Democratic Transition, half of the candidates (1,058) are teachers or intermediate level officials. Women represent less than 15 % of applicants, while the parity of applications was previously compulsory.
The main concern of the 12 million Tunisians remains the cost of living, with inflation of almost 10 % and recurring food shortages such as milk and sugar. The ballot is boycotted by most parties, including the Islamist Inspiration Movement Ennahda, a sworn enemy of President Saïed, who dominated the dissolved parliament for ten years. The powerful Central Union UGTT, which has recently become very critical of Mr. Saïed’s policy, judged these legislative elections.
al Bawsala, an NGO that scrutinizes parliamentary activities since 2014, announced that it would boycott the work “of a puppet assembly” whose role would be limited to “supporting the directions of the president”. Analyst Hamish Kinnear, from the firm Verisk Maplecroft, judges that the ballot is above all “a tool used by President Saïed to give legitimacy to his monopoly of power”. He nevertheless believes that the establishment of a parliament will “facilitate Tunisia’s relations with its main external partners, by ending seventeen months of constitutional uncertainty”. According to him, he will be easier to obtain help from donors “thanks to a return to greater political foreseeibility, even if the democratic legitimacy of the legislative elections is low”.
There is an emergency because the country’s funds are empty. The IMF, which was to give its green light on Monday to a fourth loan to Tunisia in ten years, of about 2 billion dollars, postponed its decision in early January at the request of the government, whose file was not completely completed, brought to the France-Presse agency of sources close to the file.