What’s at stake in Tunisia’s presidential election on Sunday?

Sunday’s election in Tunisia will mark the first since President Kais Saied was elected to power as an independent with no prior political experience in 2019 and later extended his rule in a “self-coup” in July 2021. He suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, Hichem Mechichi, and assumed executive authority.

Rights groups, both international and domestic, have decried plummeting standards in civil liberties, freedom of speech and the waves of arbitrary arrests to have targeted the president’s critics and opponents under Saied’s presidency.

Nevertheless, against a backdrop of widespread public disillusionment with party politics, few doubt that Saied will be returned for a second term in an election widely regarded by observers at home and abroad as “rigged” in advance.

A long way.

While far from perfect, Tunisia had long been hailed as the sole success of the series of 2011 revolutions that some observers termed the “Arab Spring”. In Tunisia, the uprising – referred to by some as the Jasmine Revolution – culminated in the ousting of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

In the wake of the revolution, the appetite for political engagement was almost tangible. Rights groups, NGOs and individual activists surged forward, eager to take part in a society that was rediscovering itself after years of autocracy.

Even the assassinations of two high profile politicians, Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, in 2013 failed to derail the transition from autocracy to democracy, with tens of thousands of Tunisians returning to the streets to defend the gains made since 2011.

The unrest, rather than crush the hopes of 2011, prompted the intervention of four of the country’s major civil society organisations, the country’s general labour union, the UGTT; the commercial union, UTICA; the Tunisian Human Rights League, LTDH; and the bar association, ONAS – which together ensured parliamentary democracy withstood the shock and the transition remained on course.

The groups’ efforts were later recognised internationally, with each awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.