Tunisia, Tunisia — As the elections approach in TunisiaPotential candidates risk arrest or summons to court as authorities crack down on those planning to challenge President Kais Saied.
On Friday, a Tunisian court judge imposed a gag order on a potential presidential candidate and restricted his movements. Abdellatif Mekki, who served as Tunisia’s health minister and was a prominent leader of the Islamist Ennahda movement before founding his own political party, is among a group of former politicians being investigated for the 2014 murder of a prominent doctor.
His political party, Labor and Realization, has criticized the timing of the politically motivated murder charges because of his plans to compete against saying in the October elections in Tunisia.
“We strongly condemn these arbitrary measures, considering them a political objective against a serious candidate in the presidential elections,” he said in a statement on Friday.
Mekki is the latest potential candidate to face legal hurdles before campaigning even begins in the North African nation of 12 million.
The challenges facing opposition candidates are a far cry from the democratic hopes felt across Tunisia a decade ago. The country emerged as one of the Arab Spring’s only success stories after overthrowing the former dictator. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali In 2011, it held peaceful and democratic elections and reformed its constitution in 2014.
Since 2019, observers have become alarmed at growing signs of democratic backsliding. Saied imprisoned political opponents, suspended parliament and rewrote the constitution to consolidate the power of the presidency. Despite Tunisia’s current political and economic challenges, large segments of the population continue to support him and his populist rhetoric directed at corrupt elites and foreign interference in internal affairs.
About a week before Mekki, Lotfi Mraihi, a doctor and veteran politician who had also announced plans to run for president, was arrested on charges related to money laundering.
Mraihi, president of the nationalist Republican People’s Union party, remained in custody after a judge issued an additional order adding to charges brought against him in January.
A spokesman for the Tunisian court told Radio Mosaique that the arrest warrant was served “on suspicion of money laundering, transferring assets and opening bank accounts abroad without the approval of the Central Bank.”
Last January, the court sentenced Mraihi to a six-month suspended prison sentence as part of an investigation into a 2019 case involving allegations of vote buying.
The Tunisian non-governmental organization Agenda Legal called the arrest a show of force.
“The arrest of the alleged candidate, Lotfi Mrahi, represents a new step by the authorities to reinforce their control of the electoral process, after announcing ‘tailor-made’ candidacy conditions, while court rulings guarantee that the rest of the candidates on the list race is under siege,” he said in a statement last week.
The arrests add Mekki and Mraihi to the list of Tunisian politicians persecuted by the courts of Saied’s Tunisia.
Amnesty International said in February that over the previous year more than 20 political critics of Saied’s government had been arrested, detained or convicted on charges related to their political activity.
The persecution of Saied’s political opponents has spanned the political spectrum, from Tunisia’s Islamists like Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, 83, to nationalists like Free Destourian Party president Abir Moussi, 49.
Ghannouchi has been behind bars since May 2024, facing foreign interference charges that Ennahda, the country’s largest Islamist party, has denounced as politically motivated.
Tunisia’s anti-terrorism court sentenced him to a year in prison and a fine following public remarks he made at a funeral in February 2022, when he appeared to call the president a “tyrant.”
Ghannouchi continues to face legal challenges. This weekend, the court sentenced him to three years in prison on charges of involvement in an illicit foreign financing scheme during the last presidential election.
Moussi, a popular right-wing figure who appeals to Tunisians nostalgic for the pre-revolution era, was arrested in October 2023. She was initially detained while being investigated under a controversial cybercrime law after the electoral authority of Tunisia will file a complaint against him. The complaint came after Moussi criticized the lack of transparency and presidential decrees that guide the electoral process.
Moussi’s party had announced plans to challenge Saied in October before her arrest and confirmed them earlier this month, although she remains jailed.
The National Salvation Front, a coalition of secular and Islamist parties including Ennahda, has said Tunisia cannot hold legitimate elections in such a political climate. The group has denounced the process as a sham and said it will not endorse or nominate any candidates.
The arrests have sparked outrage among individual political parties and exacerbated concerns about the country’s weakened political and economic landscape.
Work and Realization, Mekki’s party, said his arrest on Friday would “confuse the overall political climate, undermine the credibility of the electoral process and damage Tunisia’s image.”
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