TUNIS: Tunisia’s president has seized control of the country’s election commission, saying he would replace most of its members in a move that will entrench his one-man rule and cast doubt on electoral integrity.
In his decree on Friday, President Kais Saied said he would select three of the existing nine members of the electoral commission to stay on, serving in a new seven-member panel with three judges and an information technology specialist.
The judges would be selected by the Supreme Judicial Council, a body he also unilaterally replaced this year in a move seen as undermining the independence of the judiciary.
The former law professor, elected in 2019 amid public anger against the political class, has already dismissed parliament and taken control of the judiciary after assuming executive authority last year and saying he could rule by decree in moves his opponents denounce as a coup.
Saied, who says his actions were both legal and needed to save Tunisia from a crisis, is rewriting the democratic constitution introduced after the 2011 revolution and says he will put it to a referendum in July. The majority of parties in Tunisia reject Saied’s power seizure, with some accusing him of orchestrating a coup against the constitution. –Agencies
