Tunisia: presidential election set for October 6, 2024

The Tunisian presidency has announced the date of the next presidential election, which will be held on October 6, 2024.

It’s official: the presidential election will be held on October 6, 2024 in Tunisia. This is an announcement made by the country’s presidency, specifying that the President of the Republic, Kaïs Saïed, has signed a decree to this effect.

The current president, Kaïs Saïed, was elected in the second round of the presidential election on October 13, 2019, where he largely beat his opponent Nabil Karoui with 72.7% of the vote. This election mobilized more than 3 million voters out of an electoral body of nearly 8 million, for a population of 11.5 million Tunisians.

Two years after his election, in July 2021, Kaïs Saïed took a series of controversial measures, including dismissing the government, dissolving the Assembly of People’s Representatives and the High Council of the Judiciary, and began legislating by decree-law. A year later, in July 2022, he organized a referendum to amend the 2014 Constitution, thereby strengthening presidential powers to the detriment of the semi-parliamentary regime in place.

These actions have sparked strong criticism within the country, from political parties and many civil society organisations, while some observers saw them as a necessary readjustment of the revolutionary process that began in 2011 with the fall of former President Ben Ali.