President Saied aspires to seize all the powers in a popular consultation promoted by him and dominated by the call for a boycott by the opposition and social discontent
Between popular discouragement and the call for a boycott by the opposition, nearly 9.2 million Tunisians have been called to vote this Monday in a controversial constitutional referendum that proposes the establishment of an ultra-presidential regime. Kais Saied, the head of state and promoter of the consultation, intends to gain total control of the legislative, executive, judicial and Army powers after dissolving Parliament a year ago with the argument that he was responsible for the crisis that drags the country since the ‘Jasmine Revolution’, the result of the ‘Arab Spring’, overthrew the regime of Zine el Abidine ben Ali in 2011.
Saied, who went to vote accompanied by his wife in the coastal town of Ariana, denounced that “some actors” were trying to sabotage the vote by setting fires in Tunisia. The spokesman for the Independent Superior Instance for Elections (ISIE), Mohamed Tlili Mansri, assured that the statements would be analyzed for having failed to comply with the obligation not to pronounce on a day in which a low turnout is taken for granted. According to the agency, after the first six hours of the opening of the schools, barely 11.8% of the census had gone to the polls, more concerned about the serious state of the economy and the rise in prices than about politics.
The 15,000 voting centers set up throughout the country opened their doors without incident at 6 a.m. and are scheduled to close at 10 p.m. local time. The results of the referendum, as explained by the ISIE, will not be known until Tuesday or Wednesday. In any case, analysts point out that the new Constitution will surely go ahead since the majority of the opposition urged the population not to participate and the consultation does not require a minimum number of voters.
“An illegal process”
The Islamist-inspired Ennahda party, which held a protest on Saturday and is the majority in Parliament dissolved by Saied a year ago, called for a boycott of the meeting, considering it an “illegal process.” Similarly, the main union, UGTT, did not give a vote, while some thirty human rights defense organizations denounced that the new Magna Carta project poses an “excessive concentration of power” around the figure of the president. and “the results are known in advance and have no legitimacy.”
The president of the commission in charge of drafting the text, Sadok Belaid, warned that the document “does not look anything like the one prepared.” Not in vain, Saied made modifications to guarantee control of all the powers of the State and also provide himself with total immunity and the power to adopt “exceptional measures”.
In any case, a turnout that does not reach 41%, which was the figure for the 2019 legislative elections, the ones with the lowest turnout since the overthrow of Ben Ali, would further question the legitimacy of the Magna Carta.
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