Tunis: Tunisia was once the Arab world’s hope for a new era of democracy. Now it’s in the middle of an election that’s more of an embarrassment than a model.
Barely 11 percent of voters turned out in the first round of parliamentary elections last month, boycotted by opposition groups and ignored by many Tunisians disillusioned with their leaders.
Ten candidates won seats in the legislature, even though not a single voter voted for them, simply because they ran unopposed.
Not a single candidate bothered to run in seven assembly constituencies.
President Kais Saied is pinning his hopes on Sunday’s second round of voting, which will wrap up his sweeping redesign of Tunisian politics after he suspended the previous parliament in 2021.
The new body will have fewer powers than its predecessor and pose little more than a rubber stamp for Syed.
The president and many Tunisians blamed the previous parliament, led by the Ennahda party, for the political impasse, worsening the country’s protracted economic and social crises.
Some Ennahda officials have been jailed and the party is refusing to participate in parliamentary elections and has staged frequent protests.
In last month’s first round of voting, 23 candidates won outright seats in the 161-seat parliament: 10 of them contested unopposed and 13 won more than 50 percent of the vote, according to election officials.
In Sunday’s second round, voters are choosing from 262 candidates to fill 131 of the remaining seats.
In seven constituencies with no candidates, special elections to fill the seats will be held later, likely in March. Since Saied was elected president in 2019 with 72 percent of the vote, his support among Tunisians has plummeted.
Analysts note that since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, a growing crisis of confidence between citizens and the political class has spread across the region, and that Tunisians have been forced to create a new democratic political system celebrated with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. led.
Daily life is getting worse for Tunisians.
At a food market in Tunis, vendors struggled to sell dates, fish stacked on ice, eggplants and piles of herbs as buyers lamented rising prices.
Some people felt that Sunday’s vote would solve their problems.
Mohammed Ben Moussa, an employee of a private company, heaved a deep sigh.
Meanwhile the economy is faltering.
According to the latest figures from the National Institute of Statistics, unemployment has soared above 18 percent and more than 25 percent in poorer areas of the country’s interior, while the inflation rate is 10.1 percent.
Tunisia has been suffering for several years from a record budget deficit that has strained its ability to pay its suppliers of medicines, food and fuel, leading to shortages of milk, sugar, vegetable oil and other staples.
The Tunisian government is currently negotiating a $1.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, which was put on hold in December.