The President of Tunisia, Kais Saied, has enacted a decree giving him control of the country’s electoral commission, promising to replace most of its members in a move that will entrench his rule, casting doubt on the integrity of the body.
In the decree signed on Friday, Saied said he would only allow three of the existing nine members of the electoral commission to stay on, while he will appoint a new seven-member panel with three judges and an information technology specialist.
The judges, according to new decree, would be selected by the supreme judicial council, a body Saied unilaterally replaced earlier in the year, naming himself as the head of the commission in a move which was seen at the time as undermining the independence of the judiciary.
Head of the Tunisian electoral commission, Nabil Baffoun, while reacting to Saied’s decree, said it was a blow to the democratic gains of the country’s 2011 revolution and meant the body was no longer independent.
“It has become the president’s commission,” Baffoun said.
Also criticising the decree, Tunisia’s biggest political party, the Ennahda which has opposed Saied’s moves since last summer, said future elections will lose credibility.
“Any elections will lose all credibility with a body appointed by the president,” said Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, speaker of the parliament said.
The Tunisian leader had already dismissed the parliament and taken control of the judiciary after assuming executive authority last summer. He had also said he could rule by decree in moves his opponents denounced as a coup.
The president, who says his actions were both legal and needed to save Tunisia from political crisis, is rewriting the democratic constitution introduced after the 2011 revolution and says he will put it to a referendum in July.