TUNIS, Tunisia, July 18, (AP): Leading opposition parties in Tunisia asserted Wednesday that politically motivated arrests and gag orders are creating impossible conditions for holding democratic elections later this year.
Members of the National Salvation Front, a coalition of secular and Islamist opponents to President Kais Saied, said a government crackdown on opponents had created a climate of fear, making campaign requirements like signature-gathering nearly impossible.
"There is a clear message behind all these targeted arrests,” Riadh Chaibi, a leading member of the Islamist party Ennahda, told a press conference in the capital of the North African nation.
He said the coalition had counted more than 300 people currently imprisoned on political charges.
Leaders of Ennahda and other parties in the Front described recent arrests and limitations on those planning to challenge Saied a "suffocation in terms of freedoms, human rights and basic rights for Tunisians.”
They said they have little choice but to boycott the October presidential election, something that many parties had previously announced in protest of the country’s authoritarian drift.
"Authorities seem to find comfort in this boycott, allowing them to move forward with the electoral process without any political opposition,” Chaibi said.
"There can’t be political stability without opposition,” he added.
For months, many of Tunisia’s leading opposition figures have languished behind bars, including Abir Moussi of the Free Destourian Party and Ennahda’s Rached Ghannouchi.
Ennahda, which commanded a majority in Tunisian politics during the years that followed 2011's Arab Spring, was dealt another blow over the weekend when police arrested its secretary general, Ajmi Lourimi, along with two other party members during a routine traffic stop.