Tunisia: Abir Moussi Runs for Election from Prison
The woman, a leader of the PDL and Saied's arch rival, was jailed on October 3, 2023
President of Tunisia Kais Saied schedules presidential elections for October 6, 2024.
Democratically elected in 2019, Saied then gave his mandate an authoritarian twist.
Abir Moussi, 49, a lawyer and president of the opposition Free Destouri Party (PDL), a member of the Tunisian parliament since 2019, is one of Saied’s fiercest opponents and has been in prison since October 3, 2023. There are serious charges hanging over her, such as planning an attack to change the form of government. Moussi was arrested in front of the presidential palace in Tunis, where she had gone to appeal some of Saied’s decrees that restricted freedoms in Tunisia’s political system.
Well, now Moussi is running for election from prison three days before the rolls close. Six members of the PDL (a right-wing formation dating back to the tradition of Tunisia’s first president, Habib Bourguiba) ran for office. However, the candidacy is difficult to accept because, as reported by the Italian AGI news agency, “In order to be accepted, candidates must have the patronage of ten MPs or 40 local authority chairmen – mostly acquired by Saied – or 10,000 voters with at least 500 signatures per constituency.”
