During the first round of presidential voting on Sunday night, an electoral tsunami of economic rage and disenchantment with Tunisia's reigning political class swept away the titans of Tunisia's post-Arab Spring order.
In a stunning rebuke to national elites, well-funded representatives of Tunisia's two established political trends - moderate Islamism and big-tent secularism - were wiped from the electoral landscape in the course of a single day. Falling into line behind a broader global trend, Tunisian voters appeared to punish well-known entities, instead selecting two political outsiders for a planned runoff vote next month.
Riding atop the crest of this wave with 18.4 percent of the vote, ahead of imprisoned media mogul Nabil Karoui, was the enigmatic jurist and constitutional law professor, Kais Saied.
If a new era of Tunisian politics is dawning, its murky contours are now embodied in the complex person of Saied. With the second round poised to send voters into uncharted waters, intense interest has quickly gathered over the man who may soon wield executive power in the Arab world's sole fledgling democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring protests.
A revolution of the right
While the changes Saied champions would represent a paradigm shift in politics, the revolution he seeks is right-wing in nature. Even though his rhetoric and candidacy do not fit the traditional definition of political Islam, Saied is indisputably a social conservative.
According to Cherif, many of Saied’s stances bear much resemblance to conservative nationalists like Russian President Vladimir Putin: sometimes evoking homophobic rhetoric, he espouses a deep hostility towards foreign funding of Tunisian civil society groups, a stance almost certain to invite conflict with Western donor countries.
The candidate has also been unequivocal in his support for the death penalty, which Tunisia has not implemented since 1991. Other proposals he has endorsed, such as rejecting a bill mandating equal inheritance for women and criminally punishing public displays of affection between couples, resemble or even fall well to the right of the Islamist Ennahda Party.
Amid a sense of halting progress towards LGTBQI rights since the Arab Spring ignited in 2011, the prospect of a Saied presidency has evoked palpable fear among vulnerable communities in Tunisia. His comments about homosexuality have set off alarm bells among activists and civil rights organisations.
Saied has repeatedly claimed that homosexuality, which is still punishable by up to three years in prison, is being funded and advanced in the nation by secretive foreign funding, which he ties to imperialism and international aid for humanitarian organisations in Tunisia.
“Saied is a dangerous person for our community, who believes that homosexuality is a perversion imported from the West,” says Mounir Baatour, who founded the LGTBQI rights organisation Shams, and campaigned as Tunisia’s first openly gay presidential candidate in this year’s first round vote. Read more via Middle Eastern Eye