TUNIS: Tunisian President Kais Saied, who seized wide-ranging powers two years after his 2019 election, on Monday submitted his official candidacy for the country’s upcoming presidential election on October 6.
Saied, 66, told reporters in the capital Tunis that his candidacy was part of “a liberation and self-determination war” set to “establish a new republic.”
Experts say Saied’s challengers face significant constraints in their bid to run for office, while several would-be hopefuls are either in prison or being prosecuted.
But Saied on Monday denied that his government was repressing critical voices, saying that “whoever talks about restrictions is delusional.”
“I did not oppress anyone, and the law applies to everyone equally,” he said. “I am here as a citizen to run for office.”
“We will not accept any foreign party interfering in the choices of our people,” he added.
Saied’s submission came just two days after that of Abir Moussi, a vocal critic of Saied who has been in jail since October.
Other jailed hopefuls include Issam Chebbi, leader of centrist party Al Joumhouri, and Ghazi Chaouchi, head of the social-democratic party Democratic Current, both held for “plotting against the state.”
The two politicians are among more than 20 of Saied’s opponents detained since a flurry of arrests in February 2023.
Last week, four women working on the presidential campaign of rapper turned businessman Karim Gharbi, better known by his stage name K2Rhym, were given jail time for allegedly buying signatures of endorsement.
Three staffers on media personality Nizar Chaari’s campaign have been detained on similar suspicions, which the candidate has categorically denied.
A group of about 30 NGOs denounced on Thursday the “arbitrary detention” of candidates, an electoral authority which has “lost its independence” and “the monopolization of the public space” to bolster Saied’s re-election bid.
“We are in a war of liberation and we don’t want to restrict anyone’s freedoms,” the president said on Monday. “I did not interfere with the judiciary.”
To be listed on the ballot, candidates are required to present a list of signatures from 10,000 registered voters, with at least 500 voter signatures per constituency.
Saied said he collected over 240,000 signatures.
Tunisia president Kais Saied registers election candidacy
https://arab.news/86jy7
Tunisia president Kais Saied registers election candidacy
- President says candidacy part of ‘a liberation and self-determination war’ set to ‘establish a new republic’
- Experts say Kais Saied’s challengers face significant constraints in their bid to run for office
Libya’s Red Castle museum opens for first time since fall of Qaddafi
- The museum was closed in 2011 during a NATO-backed uprising against longtime ruler Qaddafi, who appeared on the castle’s ramparts to deliver a fiery speech
Libya’s national museum, formerly known as As-Saraya Al-Hamra or the Red Castle, has reopened in Tripoli, allowing the public access to some of the country’s finest historical treasures for the first time since the revolt that toppled Muammar Qaddafi.
The museum, Libya’s largest, was closed in 2011 during a NATO-backed uprising against longtime ruler Qaddafi, who appeared on the castle’s ramparts to deliver a fiery speech.
Renovations were started in March 2023 by the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU), which came to power in 2021 in a UN-backed political process.
“The reopening of the National Museum is not just a cultural moment but a live testimony that Libya is building its institutions,” GNU Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbiebah said at a reopening ceremony on Friday.
Built in the 1980s, the museum’s 10,000 square meters of gallery space features mosaics and murals, sculptures, coins, and artefacts dating back to prehistoric times and stretching through Libya’s Roman, Greek and Islamic periods.
The collection also includes millennia-old mummies from the ancient settlements of Uan Muhuggiag in Libya’s deep south, and Jaghbub near its eastern border with Egypt.
“The current program focuses on enabling schools to visit the museum during this period, until it is officially opened to the public at the beginning of the year,” museum director Fatima Abdullah Ahmed told Reuters.
Libya has since recovered 21 artefacts that were smuggled out of the country after Qaddafi’s fall, notably from France, Switzerland, and the United States, the chairman of the board of directors of the antiquities department Mohamed Farj Shakshoki told Reuters ahead of the opening.
Shakshoki said that talks are ongoing to recover more than two dozen artefacts from Spain and others from Austria.
In 2022, Libya received nine artefacts, including funerary stone heads, urns and pottery from the US
Libya houses five UNESCO World Heritage sites, which it said in 2016 were all endangered due to instability and conflict.
In July, Libya’s delegation to UNESCO said the ancient city of Ghadames, one of the sites, had been removed from the list as the security situation had improved.
