TUNIS: Tunisia’s parliament on Friday debated a bill that would strip a top court of its power to rule on election-related disputes, a move decried by protesters as anti-democratic just days before a presidential ballot.
The proposed judicial shift comes after Tunisia’s administrative court in August had overturned decisions barring three presidential hopefuls from running in the Oct. 6 election — a ruling later ignored by the country’s electoral board, ISIE.
The frontrunner is incumbent President Kais Saied, democratically elected in 2019 but later introduced sweeping changes that included dissolving parliament and replacing it with a legislature with limited powers.
The draft law, which was swiftly pushed through the legislature, would take away power from the administrative court and instead make the court of appeals the only one with the authority to rule on issues related to elections.
In a statement, lawmakers said they had drafted the bill over “discord” with the administrative court’s ruling that granted the barred candidates their appeals.
They also cited “imminent danger that threatens the unity of the state and its social order.”
Observers say the administrative court is seen as more independent than the court of appeals.
Lawmakers were working to “urgently pass this law to remove administrative litigation from the administrative court because this court has shown a certain unpleasant independence,” said Alexis Deswaef, vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights.
A small crowd of demonstrators gathered on Friday outside the parliament building to protest the proposed reform.
Wissam Sghaier, a spokesman for centrist party Al-Jomhouri, denounced the bill as a “last-minute change of the rules of the game.”
He called it “a political crime in all its splendor” that adds to “the abuse and repression” of President Saied’s critics.
Ahead of the vote, ISIE had rejected the presidential bids of some 14 potential candidates.
The electoral board eventually presented a final list of only three candidates, Saied and two others — former parliamentarian Zouhair Maghzaoui and businessman Ayachi Zammel.
Zammel has been kept behind bars since early September and, on Thursday, was handed a six-month prison term on top of a previous 20-month sentence for forging ballot endorsements.
International and Tunisian rights groups have criticized ISIE’s decision to ignore the administrative court’s rulings, which Tunisia’s largest labor union, UGTT called “political.”
Earlier this month, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said ISIE had “intervened to skew the ballot in favor of Saied,” with at least eight prospective candidates prosecuted, convicted, or imprisoned in the run-up to the election.
