A court in Tunisia has imprisoned one of only two candidates approved to run in next month’s presidential election against Kais Saied, the authoritarian leader who has stepped up repression ahead of the polls.
Ayachi Zammel was sentenced to 20 months in prison late on Wednesday on charges of forging signed endorsements from citizens that were required as part of his candidacy papers for the October 6 vote. He has denied any wrongdoing.
His campaign said the conviction was aimed at “disrupting his electoral progress and preventing him from [making] contact with the Tunisian people”. It added that Zammel would be tried on similar charges in four other courts in different locations on Thursday.
Authorities have not confirmed whether his name will be struck off the ballot.
Zammel’s sentencing is the latest step in a pre-poll crackdown that has extinguished hopes of a fair vote in Tunisia.
The country had previously been considered the only example of a successful transition to democracy to have emerged from among the Arab countries that rose up against dictatorship in 2011.
Saied was elected in a landslide in 2019 but two years later began dismantling Tunisia’s democratic institutions, arresting rivals and concentrating powers, in a series of moves that have alarmed opposition politicians and rights groups.
The only other approved candidate in the next month’s election is Zouhair Maghzaoui, whose al-Shaab party has backed Saied.
The electoral authority, whose members have been handpicked by Saied, has ignored rulings by the administrative court that it should reinstate three other candidates it had excluded from the ballot.
Analysts say a choice between the three candidates, who appeal to different constituencies, would have ensured a measure of genuine competition in the election and may have taken it to a second round.
Zammel, a businessman who is not considered a prominent politician, was an independent who had begun to attract the support of Saied’s opponents, especially from the Islamist Nahda party, which was the biggest force in parliament before Saied’s 2021 consolidation of power.
The crackdown on dissent in Tunisia ratcheted up earlier this month with the arrest of at least 97 Nahda members who are being investigated under the country’s counterterrorism law, according to Amnesty International.
This followed waves of repression since 2022 in which dozens of critics and opposition politicians have been detained.
“The Tunisian authorities have stepped up their clampdown on the rights to freedom of expression and association ahead of the presidential election of October 6,” Amnesty said on Tuesday.
It said this included “escalating their harassment of political opponents, restricting the work of journalists, human rights defenders and NGOs and taking steps to further undermine judicial independence”.
