Hardly any participation in Tunisia: where nobody believes in elections anymore

The vote of no confidence in the President and his new political system was clear.

At the weekend, fewer Tunisians went to the parliamentary elections since the peaceful revolution in 2011, when the Arab Spring began in the North African country.

Hans Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.

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Only a good 804,000 of the nine million eligible voters cast their votes in the early parliamentary elections, according to the electoral authority ISIE.

This corresponds to a turnout of 8.8 percent.

According to the electoral commission, the ballot boxes in the Borj El Khadhra polling station in southern Tunisia were completely empty.

The opposition parties are now demanding the resignation of President Kaïs Saïed.

The multi-party National Rescue Front has called for protests to overthrow the “July 24, 2021 system”;

at that time the President had taken power.

The rescue front, in which the Islamist Ennahda party plays an important role, said the low voter turnout was an “earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale”;

it was the strongest force in the old Parliament.

Parties were excluded from the elections

The leader of the nationalist PDL party, Abir Moussi, called on the president to resign.

Like other opposition parties, she is demanding early presidential elections because the head of state has failed to improve the economic situation and reform the country.

The opposition had boycotted the parliamentary elections, from which the president had largely excluded the parties.

The chairman of the ISIE electoral authority, Farouk Bouasker, spoke of a "modest but not shameful quota".

It is due to the fact that, in contrast to the past, there was "no vote purchase at all (...) with foreign financing".

In Tunis, however, people are still puzzling over why the electoral authority, whose chairman the president himself appointed, disclosed the numbers with such great transparency - and who might have an interest in weakening him.

Empty hearts, empty ballot boxes

Kaïs Saïed had declared the parties to be the cause of all evil, practically excluding them from the elections.

He hit the mood in large parts of the frustrated population, who are disappointed because their living conditions have not improved since 2011.

He appealed to voters on Saturday to seize the "historic opportunity to regain their legitimate rights".

But more than 90 percent of Tunisians apparently don't believe in the new parliament, with its very limited powers.

The president wants a “grassroots democracy” that marginalizes parties.

In the polls, Saïed initially enjoyed great popularity after his crackdown.

He established a presidential and authoritarian regime with a weak parliament in what was once the country of hope for the Arabellion, for which only individual candidates, but no parties, were allowed to apply.

Most of the 1,055 candidates, half of whom are teachers or civil servants, were unknown.

Only 16 percent were women.

During the referendum on the constitution in July, it was already apparent that the president is finding it difficult to mobilize the citizens for his project.

At that time, participation was still a good 30 percent, of which 95 percent voted for the constitution he wrote.

In the second round of the presidential election, which the outsider Saïed won in 2019, 56 percent took part.

In the parliamentary elections in the same year it was 41 percent, and in 2014 even 69 percent.

But even the opposition, which is now calling for new demonstrations, has only managed to get a few thousand Tunisians to take to the streets against the president in recent months.

A similar political lethargy can be observed across the region.

Hardly anything remains of the Hirak protest movement in neighboring Algeria.

Less than a quarter of voters there took part in the 2021 general election.