The Tunisian president puts his mandate back on the line during the election scheduled for October 2024. An election that should reinforce the hyper-presidentialization of the system since the arrival of Kaïs Saïed to power.
In Tunisia, 2024 will be a year of elections. In January, after the second round of local elections, the Council of Regions and Districts will be created. The second chamber of Parliament, created by the 2022 Constitution, this Council will be responsible for ensuring regional development and examining, with the Assembly, the State budget.
However, this new political architecture will not be completed until October, during the presidential election. This promises to be different from the post-revolution elections of 2014 and 2019, then placed under the double sign of plurality and alternation. This time, one man is in the lead, practically alone: Kaïs Saïed, candidate for his own succession.
A re-election would of course allow him to reaffirm his legitimacy. In 2019, he obtained a score resembling a plebiscite (72.7%), which allowed him to launch, in 2021, an offensive on power that he subsequently neither ceded nor delegated.
Summoned to do better
This election comes after the sidelining of parties and the marginalization of the institutions responsible for controlling electoral consultations; its shine will inevitably be a little tarnished. Kaïs Saïed nevertheless finds himself implicitly summoned to do even better than in 2019, which, if the elections are transparent, will be a challenge as the economic situation has deteriorated in Tunisia.
In 2019, Tunisians elected the austere constitutionalist for his probity, in the hope of turning the page on the Islamists and their excesses. Finally, taking advantage of the confusion and concerns born from the COVID-19 pandemic to impose a constitutional overhaul, Kaïs Saïed managed to concentrate all powers in his hands, with the government content to assist him while the opposition is muzzled.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, the outgoing president should therefore be comfortably re-elected. His position will be no less delicate. With poor unemployment figures, an economy at half-mast, empty coffers, and shortages, the Kaïs Saïed of 2024 will no longer be able, like that of 2019, to argue that his country is the victim of a vast conspiracy or to incriminate speculators.
