Tunisian presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was placed in pretrial detention on Wednesday as part of an investigation into suspicions of “falsifying endorsements,” his lawyers announced. The move comes after the Electoral Authority (ISIE) excluded three other candidates from the race earlier this week, considered serious rivals to outgoing President Kais Saied – who is running for a second term.
President Saied, democratically elected in 2019, has been accused of authoritarianism since a coup on July 25, 2021, in which he granted himself full powers.
Ayachi Zammel, 43, was arrested and taken into custody on Monday. The industrialist, leader of a small, little-known liberal party, has been the subject of a committal warrant since Wednesday and is due to appear before the Manouba court on Thursday, his legal team said in a statement.
He is one of three candidates selected on a list “definitive” unveiled Monday by the Isie, alongside Mr. Saied and Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, a former MP for the pan-Arabist left. The courts accuse Mr. Zammel of having broken the rules on sponsorships, like the three candidates excluded by the Isie despite the decision last week by the Administrative Court to reinstate them in the presidential race.
Abdellatif Mekki, former leader of the conservative Islamist movement Ennahdha, Mondher Zenaïdi, former minister of the Ben Ali regime, and Imed Daïmi, advisor to former president Moncef Marzouki, also close to Ennahdha, were disqualified on August 10 with 14 other applicants, notably for lack of sufficient sponsorship.
“A parody of law”
The Isie justified its rejection of the Administrative Court’s decisions by a procedural defect, namely a notification beyond a legal deadline of 48 hours. On Wednesday evening, the NGO Human Rights Watch called on the Isie to “immediately reverse its decision and end its political interference in the election,” stressing that the judgments of the Administrative Court are “legally binding”. “Instead of ensuring integrity”the Isie whose members were “appointed by the president”, “intervened to skew the vote in Saied’s favour”HRW lambasted.
Denouncing “increased repression of dissent, muzzling of the media and continued attacks on the independence of the judiciary,” HRW said the October 6 vote has become “a parody of the right of Tunisians to free and fair elections.”
On Wednesday, nine political parties and nine NGOs including the Tunisian League for Human Rights announced the creation of a “Tunisian Network for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms”, which have been in decline in the country, according to local and international NGOs since the summer of 2021.
On Tuesday, the UGTT trade union centre described the“illegal” the decision of the Isie, which represents, in his eyes, “the implementation of a political decision” et “a biased orientation that will have a prior influence on the results” of the presidential election.
