On Monday, five Tunisian parties declared they will abstain from the December 17 parliamentary elections.
The Republican Party, the Workers’ Party, the Qutb Party, the Democratic Current, and the Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties convened a news conference in Tunis’s capital during which they revealed the boycott.
Issam Chebbi, Secretary-General of the Republican Party, stated that “these elections are the last stop in a political agenda that President Kais Saied attempts to impose following his coup against the constitution and legitimacy.”
He said that most Tunisians abstained from voting in a constitutional referendum that took place in July and recorded a turnout of 30.5 percent.
“Elections are not in the works in Tunisia. The route of the coup cannot be supported,” he continued. Saied issued a proclamation this week urging citizens to vote in the nation’s parliamentary elections on December 17.
Since Saied overthrew the government and disbanded the parliament last year, Tunisia has been mired in a protracted political crisis that has made the economic situation in the nation worse.
Some people consider Saied’s actions as a “correction of the path of the 2011 revolution,” which toppled then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, while others see them as a “coup against the constitution.”
Saied, who began serving as president in 2019 for a period of five years, believes that his actions are vital to “rescue the country from impending peril.”
