By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The electoral body in Tunisia says it has tentatively cleared only three presidential candidates, including incumbent Kais Saied for the October 6 election in the country.
This comes amidst widespread condemnation by opposition figures that it is a ploy to exclude serious contesters from the poll.
The commission said it had accepted the candidacies of Saied and Zouhair Magzhaoui, who is alleged to be a close ally of Saied, as well as Ayachi Zammel for the election, while rejecting 14 others.
Zammel is the head of the Azimoun party, and has not previously been regarded as a influential politician.
Prominent politicians, including Mondher Znaidi, Imed Daimi, Abdel Latif Mekki, Karim Gharbi, Safi Said, Kamel Akrout and Nizar Chaari, said the interior ministry refused to provide them with the criminal record details required by the commission as a new condition to run.
They accused the authorities of seeking to return Tunisia to the years of dictatorship and sham elections that were the norm before a revolution in 2011.
The candidates were rejected due to a lack of citizens’ endorsements and not because they did not have a criminal record card, head of the electoral commission, Farouk Bou Asker told reporters.
Tunisian opposition parties and human rights groups have accused the authorities of using “arbitrary restrictions” and intimidation in order to ensure the re-election of Saied.
Heritage Times HT reports that earlier in the month, a Tunisian court sentenced four potential presidential election candidates to eight months in prison and banned them from running for office on a charge of vote buying.
One potential candidate, Safi Said, said on Friday that he had withdrawn from the race because he refused to participate in what he called a “one man show”.
Kais Saied, who dissolved parliament and seized control of all powers in 2021 in a move described by the opposition as a coup, had said last year that “he would not hand over the country to non-patriots.”
