Tunisian President Kais Saied on Friday seized control of the country’s election commission by replacing most of its members, reported Reuters.
Mr. Saied issued a decree on Friday that replaces members of the Independent Electoral Commission with new people appointed by him. In his decree, the president 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 which he replaced this year in a move seen as undermining the independence of the judiciary.
The Election Commission is one of the last independent bodies in Tunisia, and changing its members by presidential decree is almost likely to result in a controversy over the credibility of any subsequent elections. The move will entrench the Tunisian president’s one-man rule and cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process.
Saied was elected as the Tunisian president in 2019 amid public anger against the political class. He has already dismissed parliament and taken control of the judiciary after assuming executive authority last summer and saying he could rule by decree in moves his opponents denounce as a coup.
Saied, who claims his moves 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.
Tunisia’s biggest political party, the Islamist Ennahda, which continues to oppose Saied’s moves since last summer, said it would hold consultations with other parties on how to respond.
“Any elections will lose all credibility with a body appointed by the president,” said Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi, speaker of the Tunisian parliament.
Tunisia’s main Western donors have urged Saied to return to a democratic, constitutional path.
