Tunisia's Kais Saied wins landslide reelection, entrenching his power in Arab Spring's birthplace

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — President Kais Saied won a landslide victory in Tunisia's election Monday, keeping his grip on power after a first term in which opponents were imprisoned and the country's institutions overhauled to give him more authority.

The North African country's Independent High Authority for Elections said Saied received 90.7% of the vote, a day after exit polls showed him with an insurmountable lead in the country known as the birthplace of the Arab Spring more than a decade ago.

“We’re going to cleanse the country of all the corrupt and schemers,” the 66-year-old populist said in a speech at campaign headquarters. He pledged to defend Tunisia against threats foreign and domestic.

That raised alarm among the president's critics including University of Tunis law professor Sghayer Zakraoui, who said Tunisian politics were once again about “the absolute power of a single man who places himself above everyone else and believes himself to be invested with a messianic message.”

Zakraoui said the election results were reminiscent of Tunisia under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled for more than 20 years before becoming the first dictator toppled in the Arab Spring uprisings. Saied received a larger vote share than Ben Ali did in 2009, two years before fleeing the country amid protests.

The closest challenger, businessman Ayachi Zammel, won 7.4% of the vote after sitting in prison for the majority of the campaign while facing multiple sentences for election-related crimes.

Yet Saied's win was marred by low voter turnout. Election officials reported 28.8% of voters participated on Oct. 6 — a significantly smaller showing than in the first round of the country's two other post-Arab Spring elections and an indication of apathy plaguing the country's 9.7 million eligible voters.

Saied’s most prominent challengers — imprisoned since last year — were prevented from running, and lesser-known candidates were jailed or kept off the ballot. Opposition parties boycotted the contest, calling it a sham amid Tunisia’s deteriorating political climate and authoritarian drift.

Over the weekend, there was little sign of an election underway in Tunisia apart from an anti-Saied protest on Friday and celebrations in the capital on Sunday evening.

“He will re-enter office undermined rather than empowered by these elections,” Tarek Megerisi, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on X.

Saied's critics pledged to keep opposing his rule.

“It’s possible that after 20 years our kids will protest on Avenue Habib Bourguiba to tell him to get out,” said Amri Sofien, a freelance filmmaker, referring to the capital’s main thoroughfare. “There is no hope in this country.”

Such despair is a far cry from the Tunisia of 2011, when protesters took to the streets demanding “bread, freedom and dignity," ousted the president and paved the way for the country’s transition into a multiparty democracy.

Tunisia in the following years enshrined a new constitution, created a Truth and Dignity Commission to bring justice to citizens tortured under the former regime and saw its leading civil society groups win the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering political compromise.

But its new leaders were unable to buoy the country's flailing economy and quickly became unpopular amid constant political infighting and episodes of terrorism and political violence.

Against that backdrop, Saied — then a political outsider — won his first term in 2019 promising to combat corruption. To the satisfaction of his supporters, in 2021 he declared a state of emergency, suspended parliament and rewrote the constitution to consolidate the power of the presidency — a series of actions his critics likened to a coup.

Tunisians in a referendum approved the president's proposed constitution a year later, although voter turnout plummeted.

Authorities subsequently began to unleash a wave of repression on the once-vibrant civil society. In 2023, some of Saied's most prominent opponents from across the political spectrum were thrown in prison, including right-wing leader Abir Moussi and Islamist Rached Ghannouchi, the co-founder of the party Ennahda and former speaker of Tunisia’s parliament.

Dozens of others were imprisoned on charges including inciting disorder, undermining state security and violating a controversial anti-fake news law critics say has been used to stifle dissent.

The pace of the arrests picked up earlier this year, when authorities began targeting additional lawyers, journalists, activists, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the former head of the post-Arab Spring Truth and Dignity Commission.

“The authorities seemed to see subversion everywhere,” said Michael Ayari, senior analyst for Algeria & Tunisia at the International Crisis Group.

Dozens of candidates had expressed interest in challenging the president, and 17 submitted preliminary paperwork to run in Sunday’s race. However, members of the election commission approved only three.

The role of the commission and its members, all of them appointed by the president under his new constitution, came under scrutiny. They defied court rulings ordering them to reinstate three candidates they had rejected. The parliament subsequently passed a law stripping power from the administrative courts.

Such moves sparked international concern, including from Europe, which relies on partnership with Tunisia to police the central Mediterranean, where migrants attempt to cross in from North Africa to Europe.

European Commission Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Nabila Massrali said Monday the EU “takes note of the position expressed by many Tunisian social and political actors regarding the integrity of the electoral process.”

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Associated Press writers Annie Risemberg and Mehdi El Arem in Tunis, Tunisia, contributed to this report. Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco.