Several thousand Tunisians celebrated on Sunday the election of retired constitutional lawyer Kais Saied to the new Tunisian president. Of the 26 candidates, the 61-year-old was probably the most unlikely winner. All the more surprising how clearly the result turned out.
With 72.4 percent, Saied prevailed in the run-off election against the media mogul Nabil Karoui, who had been released only three days before the election from pre-trial detention. Karoui is a foster son of former President Caid Essebsi, who died in August, and is suspected of money laundering and tax evasion. The political newcomers Kaies is considered incorruptible, but politically completely inexperienced.
"This is only the real revolution"
On the boulevard Avenue Bourguiba in the capital Tunis, revolutionary songs were heard again for the first time after the fall of dictator Ben Ali. The Independent Electoral Authority (ISIE) had organized the parliamentary elections and both ballots of the presidential election without incident. When around 19 o'clock the first extrapolation was published, the crowd burst into cheers. "This is just the real revolution," shouted Mohamed Lamin, an engineer who had come with his family to the highway closed by police.
At the same time, Saied presented his vision to journalists: "The Tunisians have opened a new page in our history book," he said. "I want to create a revolution within the existing laws and the existing constitution, a new relationship between citizens and state".
He sees himself only as a means to enforce the "will of the population," says Saied. Many Tunisians are bitterly disappointed with the 2011 jasmine revolution. Although there is no freedom of expression like in any other country of the Arab Spring, the political elite has successfully prevented economic reforms and the fight against corruption in recent years. Especially in rural areas, most of the thirty-year-olds struggle with day laborer jobs.
Nickname "Robocop"
Now Saied's movement "Echab Yourid" (about: The people want) to eliminate this lack of perspective. The center of the idea is a grassroots democratic and decentralized system of government. In the municipalities, citizens' initiatives and non-political party lists are to designate community representatives, who then represent local interests in specialist committees and in parliament. Even before the end of a legislative period, citizens should be able to relieve their ambassadors' confidence.
The stoic professor with the unmoving features was previously only a political activist and his students a term. In a short-term TV debate last Friday, still a rarity in the Arab world, came from a family of lawyers originated Saied with his for many Tunisians difficult to understand high Arabic. His monotone way of speaking and his promise to work relentlessly against corruption earned him the nickname "Robocop". The fact that a political career changer who rejects social media and works exclusively with volunteers leaves the entire competition behind is a political earthquake.
Fethi Belaid / AFP
Presidential candidate Saied on Sunday at the polling station: Like Don Quixote against the elites
After the revolution, the legal lecturer worked on the constitution adopted three years ago in Tunisia. His university seminars he continued informally on the weekend. With the collective taxi or with his old Opel cadet, he drove to a discussion evening organized by volunteer teams on local participation in small towns, there where Tunisian politicians rarely look and did not change much after 2011.
Skepticism towards Saied's advisers
Four years ago, Saied refused a presidential candidacy because of the opaque power games for him in the presidential palace. The chance encounter with an unemployed student, however, had finally convinced him, as a kind of Don Quixote to compete against the clandestinely elite Tunisia, he says. Many secular Tunisians also consider Saied believable, but fear his advisory team, which includes both ultra-left and conservative-religious revolutionaries. The punishability of homosexuality wants Saied retained as well as the death penalty.
As President, he will be responsible for foreign and security policy in the future. Concrete solutions to the war in neighboring Libya or over one million living below the poverty line Tunisians are missing in his program. But perhaps that is not his most urgent problem: If the economic situation does not improve until the spring, experts fear social unrest such as those that plagued the country last year.
In Saied's office on Ibn Khaldoun Street, after the arrival of the first voting results, there was no frenetic jubilation. The President-elect sat down at his empty desk with his usual grave mine, folded his hands and said softly, "I feel a huge responsibility, we must not fail."