TUNIS: Tunisia’s parliament was set to vote on a major amendment to the electoral law on Friday, nine days before a presidential election that opposition groups fear will cement President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule. The bill strips the Administrative Court of its authority to adjudicate electoral disputes. It is likely to pass in an assembly elected in 2022 on an 11 percent turnout after Saied dissolved the previous one and prompted an opposition boycott.
Political opposition and civil society groups called for protests against the bill near parliament.
The Administrative Court is widely seen as the last independent judicial body, after Saied dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council and dismissed dozens of judges in 2022. The court this month ordered the electoral commission to reinstate disqualified presidential candidates, saying the legitimacy of the Oct. 6 election was in question. But the commission defied the court and has allowed only two candidates to run against Saied.
Lawmakers said they had proposed the bill because they believed the Administrative Court was no longer neutral and could annul the election and plunge Tunisia into chaos and a constitutional vacuum.
Critics argue that Saied is using the electoral commission and the judiciary to secure victory by stifling competition and intimidating rivals. He for his part says he is fighting traitors, mercenaries and corruption.
Saied was democratically elected in 2019, but then tightened his grip on power and began ruling by decree in 2021 in a move the opposition has described as a coup. Presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was sentenced last week to 20 months in prison on charges of falsifying popular endorsements, and to a further six months on Wednesday on charges of falsifying documents.
Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Constitutional Party, has been imprisoned since last year on charges of harming public security. Another prominent politician, Lotfi Mraihi, was jailed this year on charges of vote-buying in 2019.
Both had said they would run in October, but were prevented from submitting their applications from jail.
Another court jailed four other potential candidates in August and gave them lifetime bans from running for office.

GENEVA: A group of 10 global trade unions filed a complaint on Friday against Israel with the International Labour Organization, alleging that its treatment of Palestinian workers since the Gaza war began had breached a global treaty.
Criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian workers, under scrutiny for decades, has increased at the Geneva-based UN labor body since the war started on Oct. 7.
The complaint summarised in a statement sent to journalists focuses on Israel’s exclusion of some 200,000 Palestinian migrant workers, which Israel justifies on security grounds. It claims unpaid wages and other compensation for them and other Palestinian workers which the unions say could amount to billions of dollars.
“The sudden unemployment of Palestinians working in Israel has left hundreds of thousands destitute,” said Stephen Cotton, general secretary of the London-based International Transport Workers’ Federation, one of the unions that signed the complaint.
“Israel must comply with its international legal obligations and ensure these workers receive their owed wages immediately,” Cotton said.
Israel has blamed its treatment of Palestinian workers from Israel on Hamas, saying the militant group had targeted commuter routes on and after the Oct. 7 attacks in which 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis.
The trade unions who filed the complaint say they represent some 207 million workers in over 160 countries across a range of sectors including catering, agriculture and industry.
Other trade union groups signing onto the complaint include Education International and the Building and Wood Workers’ International.
The groups allege violations of the 1949 Protection of Wages Convention which Israel has ratified along with around 100 other countries, according to the UN agency’s website.
Under ILO rules, the body can set up a so-called tripartite committee composed of government and employers’ and workers’ groups to examine alleged violations of the convention. This could eventually lead to an investigation and even sanctions, as occurred in Myanmar in the 1990s.