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    Tunisia’s President Cruises to Landslide Re-Election Victory

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    President Kais Saied’s apparent landslide re-election is the latest sign that authoritarianism has returned to the birthplace of the Arab Spring.In Tunisia’s first presidential election since its authoritarian leader began dismantling the democracy Tunisians built after their 2011 Arab Spring revolution, the apparent winner came as little surprise: the incumbent himself.President Kais Saied, first elected in 2019, easily won re-election on Sunday, according to exit polls broadcast on state television.The government had disqualified most of his would-be challengers and arrested his main rival on electoral fraud charges that rights groups said were trumped up. The resulting race recalled the days of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator who ruled Tunisia from 1987 until his overthrow in 2011, rather than the competitive elections of the years in between, when Tunisia was working to develop a full-fledged democracy.Mr. Saied captured more than 89 percent of the vote over Ayachi Zammel, the imprisoned candidate, and Zouhair Maghzaoui, a leftist who had previously supported Mr. Saied before running to replace him, according to exit polls.But turnout was roughly half what it was in the last presidential election, according to figures released by the government commission that oversees elections — the latest sign that the country’s multiplying crises have damaged Tunisians’ faith in a president many once idolized, even though they see no real alternative to him among the country’s weak and fractious political opposition.Mr. Saied leaving a polling station in Tunis on Sunday. Exit polls showed he had won more than 89 percent, according to state television.Ons Abid/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Support for Tunisian President Slipping After Parliament Vote

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      Turnout was meager in two rounds of voting for a Parliament stripped of much of its power, with most political parties barred from the elections.Tunisia, the only Arab country to emerge from the Arab Spring protests of more than a decade ago with a democracy, has not had a Parliament since its president suspended the assembly and established one-man rule in July 2021.But when the names of the North African country’s newly elected members of Parliament were finally announced on Tuesday, after two rounds of voting, it did not seem like a comeback for democracy. In the end, perhaps what the election results signaled most strongly was fast-fading support for President Kais Saied.Only 11.4 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the runoff on Sunday, only slightly more than the 11.2 percent in the first round — the lowest turnout in any global election in decades, according to Max Gallien, a political scientist at Britain’s Institute of Development Studies. At least two of the president’s loudest supporters lost their bids, though several others won.“The loss of people who claim to be close to Saied is another indicator of the shallowness of the political project he is advancing: no vision, no strategy, no team,” said Youssef Cherif, a political analyst who directs the Columbia Global Centers in Tunis.Banking on his initial widespread popularity, Mr. Saied rewrote Tunisia’s post-Arab Spring Constitution last year, giving himself sweeping authority and demoting Parliament to an advisory body, stripping much of its power. He also issued a new electoral law banning political parties from involvement in the election, so that voters chose individual candidates rather than voting for party lists as they had done in previous elections.As a result, Parliament was set to be a patchwork of individuals without party affiliations, platforms or agendas to hold them together. The very fact that the winners participated, however, signaled a degree of support for the president: It meant they were willing to at least lend some legitimacy to his new program. Opposition groups boycotted the election.The parliamentary elections were widely seen as a gauge of what Tunisians thought of his plans, and of whether Mr. Saied was sincere about preserving Tunisian democracy, as he had pledged to do. On both, critics and analysts charged, Mr. Saied fell flat.In some districts, only one candidate ran, negating the need for any runoff at all. Women won just 25 of the assembly’s 161 seats, according to Tunisia’s electoral authority, compared with 68 who held seats in 2014. Mr. Saied now controls the elections authority after replacing its formerly independent board.The election of a new Parliament was supposed to be the next step in Mr. Saied’s plan to remake the country’s political system, one that he claims will be a truer, more direct democracy. In reality, it has put nearly all power in his hands, unchecked.A photo released by the Tunisian presidency shows President Kais Saied at a polling station during the first round of parliamentary elections in Tunis in December.Tunisian Presidency, via ia ReutersFar from saving the country from economic and political crises, as many hoped he would after he seized power, the president has offered few solutions as Tunisia staggers through a downturn that has left shelves bare of basics such as sugar and bottled water, families hard-pressed to feed themselves and the government unable to pay salaries.Disenchantment with Mr. Saied’s handling of the economy appeared to be a major factor in the meager turnout in July’s constitutional referendum, where about 30 percent of voters approved the president’s new Constitution.Mr. Saied had called on supporters to vote for the new charter, but after announcing the date of the parliamentary election — the first round was in December — Mr. Saied did little to promote the vote.That, Mr. Cherif said, “confirms that he sees little interest in parliamentary democracy.”Mr. Saied has never been shy about his contempt for Parliament.“Approximately 90 percent didn’t take part in voting because the Parliament, for them, doesn’t mean anything anymore,” he said in a meeting with his prime minister on Monday, according to a video his office posted on Facebook.He had a point.Police officers outside a polling station in Tunis on Sunday.Mohamed Messara/EPA, via ShutterstockMany Tunisians continue to blame the political parties who dominated Parliament over the last decade for stymying Mr. Saied’s reforms, giving him an opening to ban them from the electoral process. Anti-Saied protests remain limited.Though reliable polling is also scarce, the president’s political opponents appear even more unpopular than he is, leaving Tunisians stuck between two unpalatable choices.Still, growing numbers have expressed fear of Mr. Saied’s increasing authoritarianism as the president prosecutes and jails critics. A political activist, Chaima Issa, was questioned last week by a military judge over critical comments she made about Mr. Saied on the radio, while a former prime minister from a major opposition party, Ali Laarayedh, was imprisoned in December.Yet the outcry over Mr. Saied’s rollback of rights and freedoms Tunisians won after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising has remained limited — apart from members of the opposition, who used the flop of the elections to call for Mr. Saied’s resignation and early presidential elections to replace him.“The results show that 89 percent of Tunisians have ignored this charade,” Ahmed Najib Chebbi, a veteran politician who leads the National Salvation Front, a coalition of opposition factions, said at a news conference after the runoff vote. More

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      Islamists See Big Losses in Moroccan Parliamentary Elections

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      The moderate Justice and Development Party may have lost control of Parliament, according to early results, in the latest defeat for Islamists in the region.Morocco’s moderate Islamist party suffered major losses in parliamentary elections on Wednesday, a stinging setback in one of the last countries where Islamists had risen to power after the Arab Spring protests.Moroccans cast ballots in legislative, municipal and regional races, the first such votes in the country since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.Despite turnout figures showing nearly half of Moroccans didn’t cast a ballot, the results were clear: The Justice and Development Party, the moderate Islamists known as the PJD, who have held power since 2011, faced steep losses both up and down the ballot — possibly enough to lose control of Parliament.With more than half of the votes counted, the winners included the National Rally of Independents, and the conservative Istiqlal party, both seen as closely aligned with the monarchy.Any changing of the guard, however, is unlikely to herald major policy shifts in a country where the royal palace has long been in command. While Morocco is officially a constitutional monarchy, its Parliament lacks the power to overrule the will of Mohammed VI, said Saloua Zerhouni, a political science professor in the capital, Rabat.“The monarchy will continue to control political parties, undermine the powers of government and the Parliament, and position itself as the sole effective political institution,” Ms. Zerhouni said.But the result did show one thing: the diminishing space that Islamists now find for themselves in the Middle East and North Africa.A polling station on Wednesday in Rabat. Voter turnout was expected to be low, as it has been in the past three elections.Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAfter the pro-democracy protests of the Arab Spring in 2011, many Islamist parties were allowed to run in elections, in some cases for the first time. They swept parliamentary seats in some countries and took power in others, including in Morocco, where overhauls by Mohammed VI paved the way for the PJD to form a governing coalition.But the tide eventually turned against the Islamists. In Egypt in 2013, a coup deposed the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to its current dictatorship. This year, President Kais Saied of Tunisia suspended Parliament, which was controlled by moderate Islamists, in what many countries described as a coup.In Morocco, the moderate Islamists made little headway on any agendas of their own, with key ministries like foreign affairs and industry being controlled by other parties. When Morocco’s king decided to make a deal last year with Israel to normalize relations, there was nothing Islamists could do to stop a move they bitterly opposed.“Most Moroccans across the country, across educational levels, have a pretty healthy dose of political skepticism” and saw that the Islamists had little real power, said Vish Sakthivel, a postdoctoral associate in Middle East studies at Yale University.And as the pandemic swept through Morocco, the royal palace was seen as the main driver of relief programs.“Most of the decisions aimed at alleviating the social and economic effects of the pandemic were associated with the central power, the monarchy,” Ms. Zerhouni said. “Whereas political parties and the Parliament were presented as inactive and awaiting directives from the king.”The distrust has previously been reflected in low numbers at the polls, including in the past three elections, which averaged a turnout of just 42 percent. And this time, pandemic restrictions forced most campaigning online, alienating many voters without internet access.A wall in Khemisset, Morocco, painted with the symbols of some of the political parties involved in the elections.Jalal Morchidi/Anadolu Agency, via Getty ImagesIn March, Morocco overhauled its electoral laws, making it more difficult for any party to have a big lead in terms of seats. The leading party will now have to form a coalition government bringing together several parties with different ideologies.To many, the moves have diluted the power of parties to govern and strengthened the king’s hand — and led some to not cast a ballot at all on Wednesday.“The room for expression available to citizens to express their grievances has been reduced so much that the only way today to show discontent without repercussions is to abstain from voting because the regime is attentive to the participation rate,” said Amine Zary, 51, who works in the tourism industry in Casablanca and did not vote.On Morocco’s streets, many pointed to the fact that elections had changed little in the past decade.Cases of protest by self-immolation continue to make the news, a reminder of the one that set off the initial unrest of the Arab Spring after a fruit seller set himself on fire in 2010 in Tunisia. Beatings by police officers remain frequent. A Moroccan protest movement in 2017 was met with crackdowns. And the government has targeted journalists who have spoken out against oppression.“I literally have a knot in my stomach because I have a feeling of déjà vu,” said Mouna Afassi, 29, an entrepreneur in Rabat who voted on Wednesday. “I recognize this feeling of hope too well. During five years, they allow us to find the strength to believe it before receiving another slap.”She added, “I would like to stop thinking about leaving Morocco in order to give my daughter the life I dream of for her.”A volunteer with the National Rally of Independents passing out campaign pamphlets in Sidi Slimane last month.Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe challenges were clear on a recent Saturday when, despite restrictions on campaigning imposed because of the pandemic, volunteers canvassed a residential neighborhood in Rabat. In a small office, members of the Democratic Leftist Federation, a coalition of different parties, convened to bolster their get-out-the vote efforts.“You have to show the citizens that they are like you,” Nidal Oukacha, 27, a campaign director said to one of the volunteers. “We need to tell people that Morocco can still change.”But as the team fanned out on bicycles across the district, getting the message out was easier said than done. Many people were not home, and many that were had already made up their minds. A few potential voters listened to the canvassers, but it was not clear whether they would cast ballots in the end.Leila Idrissi, 59, a physiotherapist and a politician with the nationalist Party of Independence, said Moroccans must not give up on voting even if they are frustrated with political stagnation. “A lot of promises weren’t kept, especially in the last eight years,” she said. “I tell young people that if they don’t vote, they’re letting people who aren’t competent or ill-intentioned people decide for them. They need to be in charge of their future.” More