What’s at stake in Tunisia’s presidential election on Sunday?

And what is the political climate in the country under the leadership of President Kais Saied?

Sunday’s election in Tunisia will mark the first since President Kais Saied was elected to power as an independent with no prior political experience in 2019 and later extended his rule in a “self-coup” in July 2021. He suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, Hichem Mechichi, and assumed executive authority.

Rights groups, both international and domestic, have decried plummeting standards in civil liberties, freedom of speech and the waves of arbitrary arrests to have targeted the president’s critics and opponents under Saied’s presidency.

Nevertheless, against a backdrop of widespread public disillusionment with party politics, few doubt that Saied will be returned for a second term in an election widely regarded by observers at home and abroad as “rigged” in advance.

A long way.

While far from perfect, Tunisia had long been hailed as the sole success of the series of 2011 revolutions that some observers termed the “Arab Spring”. In Tunisia, the uprising – referred to by some as the Jasmine Revolution – culminated in the ousting of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.