Local elections in Tunisia were held on the 6th of May 2018. The people headed to the polls to vote in the country’s first free municipal elections since the Tunisian revolution in 2011, where President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his government were removed.
To many analysts, Tunisia is seen as the only real democratic success of the Arab Spring as the people managed to topple the government without triggering major violence or a civil war and these elections were important because municipalities are the first level of governance in the system of decentralisation, which was enshrined in the 2014 Constitution. The Independent High Authority for Elections, established as an independent constitutional body in the 2014 Constitution, were responsible for the organisation and supervision of the elections in Tunisia.
This year’s elections were especially significant for the people as the former government, led by President Ben Ali, routinely avoided allocating appropriate resources to several municipalities. According to a report by Al-Jazeera, “the country’s municipalities have historically been overshadowed by the central authorities in Tunis, which left little to no room for deliberation and progress to take effect in the rest of the country, especially in the rural and less industrialised interior regions.”
Before the vote in May, living conditions in the north African country had deteriorated so much that many citizens began crossing over into Europe illegally, while others turned to militancy. The economy was struggling and the people had started growing weary of their leaders as the election had been pushed forward 4 times.
An election commission official told Reuters, before the final results were announced, that: “Independents got 32.2 percent of the vote, the Ennahda party 28.6 percent and Nidaa Tounes party 20.8 percent,” a possible reflection of the people’s apathy towards their leaders. It is worthy to note that the major parties recorded significantly less votes than they did in the country’s 2014 parliamentary elections, and this is partly because of “growing criticism over Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes, which are governing coalition partners along with other parties.”
Several political analysts in the country have noted that the Nidaa Tounes’ losses could be due to the public perception of the party leadership. Notably, the party lost an estimated 800,000 votes in this year’s elections as the youth vote, in particular, dropped sharply. “Turnout was also down at 33.7 percent. Most voters were older and some politicians questioned if that was due to a lack of enthusiasm among Tunisia’s young about the political class.”
According to the electoral college, this year’s turnout was pegged at a meagre 33.7 percent.
In the aftermath of the elections, the main challenge will be to match voters’ expectations with local budgets in a country where the central government makes the main decisions about how and where money gets spent.
