What is it that makes almost every politician so self-conceited as to think that he or she is a presidential material?
The Tunisian Election Commission must have asked itself this question as it pruned down the list of 70 candidates to a still-large field of 27 for its presidential election next month?
Of course it is human nature to swing from one extreme to the other and is therefore to be expected that Tunisia, the country that set in motion the Arab Spring that liberated it from crass dictatorship should adopt permissive democratization.
“We have accepted officially 27 candidates in presidential elections from a total of 70 candidates who filled their papers,” Chafik Sarsar, head of TEC.
The list includes at least five former ministers from the government of ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Among the candidates Abd Errahim Zouari, a former transport minister, Mondher Zenaidi, a former health minister and Kamel Morjan, a former foreign minister, all of the former Ben Ali government.
Also in the race is Beji Caid Essebsi, the leader of Tunisia’s main secular party Nida Tounes, who served as Speaker of Parliament under Ben Ali, and Kamel Nabli, the former central bank governor after the revolution under the government of Ennahda, the main Islamist party that has ruled Tunisia since 2011.
The Ennahda is however not contesting this year’s presidential election in a rare democratic concession to allow the other parties the opportunity to attain the presidency, following allegations that it was seeking to entrench itself in power as a first step to a return to dictatorship.
It is expected though that its candidate will become the Prime Minister which is a more powerful post than the presidency under Tunisia’s arrangement in its advance towards democracy.
The parliamentary election will be held on Oct. 26, barely a month before the presidential election.
Under a new constitution adopted this year, the Tunisian president makes senior military and foreign policy appointments and nominates the prime minister, who thereafter retains more powers than the president.