Tunisian president seizes control of electoral commission

Tunisia’s president seized control of the country’s election commission on Friday, saying he would replace most of its members in a move that will entrench his one-man rule and cast doubt on electoral integrity.

The commission head Nabil Baffoun told Reuters that President Kais Saied’s decree was a blow to the democratic gains of the country’s 2011 revolution and meant the body was no longer independent.

“It has become the president’s commission,” he said.

President Kais Saied 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 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.

In his decree on Friday he 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.