Tunisia's electoral commission said last night it had pre-approved only three presidential candidates, including current head of state Kais Sayed, amid widespread criticism of what the opposition described as the exclusion of serious contenders for the post, Reuters reported.< /p>
The commission announced that it had approved the candidacies of Sayed, Zuhair Magzawi, who is considered close to Sayed, and Ayahi Zamel for the October 6 election, rejecting the remaining 14 candidates, BTA reports.
Zamel is the head of the party “Azimun“ and until now he was not considered an influential public figure.
A number of prominent Tunisian politicians said the interior ministry had refused to provide them with criminal records required by the commission as a condition for candidacy. They accused the authorities of trying to return Tunisia to the years of dictatorship and rigged elections that were the norm before the 2011 revolution.
The chairman of the commission, Farooq Bou Asker, told reporters that the candidates were rejected because of a lack of public support, not because they failed to submit criminal records.
Tunisian opposition parties and human rights organizations accuse the authorities of resorting to “arbitrary restrictions” for Sayed's re-election. and intimidation.
A court in the African country this month sentenced four potential presidential candidates to eight months in prison for vote-buying and banned them from running. One of them, Safi Saeed, said on Friday that he had withdrawn from the race because he refused to wait in a “one-man show”.
Qais Syed, who dissolved parliament and took control of all branches of government in 2021 in what the opposition described as a coup, said last year that he “will not hand over the country to unpatriots”.