Tunisia lawmakers revise election law days ahead of vote

Tunisia’s parliament approved a law on Friday that strips a top court of its power to rule on election-related disputes, a move decried by protesters as anti-democratic just days before a presidential ballot.

The judicial shift comes after Tunisia’s administrative court in August overturned decisions barring three presidential hopefuls from running in the October 6 election — a ruling later ignored by the country’s electoral board, ISIE.

The frontrunner is incumbent President Kais Saied, who was elected in 2019 but later orchestrated a sweeping power grab that included dissolving parliament and replacing it with a legislature with limited powers.

The law, which was swiftly pushed through the legislature and passed with 116 votes in favour, 12 against and eight abstentions, takes away power from the administrative court and instead makes the court of appeals the only one with the authority to rule on issues related to elections.

Lawmakers said in a statement that they had drafted the bill over “discord” with the administrative court’s ruling that granted the barred candidates their appeals.

They also cited “imminent danger that threatens the unity of the state and its social order”.

Observers say the administrative court is seen as more independent than the court of appeals.

Lawmakers were working to “urgently pass this law to remove administrative litigation from the administrative court, because this court has shown a certain unpleasant independence”, said International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) vice-president Alexis Deswaef.

During parliament’s session on Friday, independent lawmaker Bilel Mechri played a recording of Saied from 2019 in which he had said that any amendments to the electoral law just before a vote would “kill democracy”.

Another independent parliamentarian, Hichem Hosni, called the bill “unconstitutional”.

A small crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the parliament building to protest the reform.

“Laws revised in the middle of elections in favour of Kais Saied = death of democracy,” read one placard.

Wissam Sghaier, spokesman for centrist party Al Jomhouri, denounced the amendment as a “last-minute change of the rules of the game”.

He called it “a political crime in all its splendour” that adds to “the abuse and repression” on Saied’s critics.

Ahead of the presidential vote, ISIE had rejected the bids of some 14 potential candidates.

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The electoral board eventually presented a final list of only three candidates, Saied and two others — former parliamentarian Zouhair Maghzaoui and businessman Ayachi Zammel.

Zammel has been kept behind bars since early September, and on Thursday was handed a six-month prison term on top of a previous 20-month sentence for forging voter endorsements.

International and Tunisian human rights groups have criticised ISIE’s decision to ignore the administrative court’s rulings, which Tunisia’s main trade union confederation, the UGTT, called “political”.

Earlier this month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said ISIE had “intervened to skew the ballot in favour of Saied”, with at least eight prospective candidates prosecuted, convicted or imprisoned in the run-up to the election.