In this blog I am going to be comparing and contrasting the 2019 presidential election in Tunisia with the 2017 presidential election in France. Tunisia is the periphery country and also the country that I am focusing on in my research paper. France, the former colonizer of Tunisia, is the core nation that I am going to be talking about. Both Tunisia and France are liberal democrat states, the text states that the characteristics for liberal democracies are “ First, pluralistic elections, in which there is competition between two or more parties to form the government, are held regularly. Second, all adult citizens are entitled to vote in these elections. Third, there are political freedoms that allow all citizens to associate freely and express their political opinions” (Flint). Both nations are democracies, though Tunisia is a relatively new one, becoming a democracy after the Jasmine Revolution during the 2011 Arab Spring. This makes this comparison not a typical comparison between core and periphery nations because Tunisian is so far a functioning democracy, which was proved with the 2019 election.
In September 2019, Tunisia had its second election in the history of its young democracy. The elections were supposed to be held in November, but in July 2019 the first democratically elected president Beji Caid Essebsi died and the election had to be pushed up. There were nine candidates who ran for the election, the two most successful candidates were Kais Saied, the winner of the election, and Nabil Karroui of the Heart of Tunisia party (Yerkes). Saied is a former college professor and populist conservative candidate, who didn’t run a campaign and is not affiliated with any major political party. Saied was especially popular with young people and won the election in a landslide, capturing 72% of the vote. He was especially popular in urban areas;these population centers aided his victories. In regards to foreign policy, Saied is notably anti-Israel. Second place went to Nabil Karroui, the owner of a popular television station. Karoui was arrested on charges of money laundering shortly after announcing his candidacy, despite this he still won 27% of the vote. Karoui states that he thinks that there was foul play in the election; he was released only 4 days before the final voting (BBC News). Other notable candidates include Youseff Chahed of the Tahya Tounes party, and Abdelfattah Mourou of the Ennahda party (Yerkes).
Another interesting development in this election is the candidacy of Mounir Baatour, who was the first ever openly gay presidential canidate for a Muslim country. Unfortunately, his candidacy was not recognized and was forced to flee to France as a political refugee in 2020. This remains the major black mark on Tunisia’s democracy. Tunisia is a parliamentary democracy with religious freedom and women's rights, though LGBTQ rights are dismal in Tunisia. LGBTQ people are heavily persecuted in the country, and there's something very un-democratic about not allowing a man to run for office due to his sexual orientation. I believe this shows some growing pains in Tunisian’s new democracy and sets them apart from older democracies such as France, where these types of issues haven’t happened in years.
The next election that I am going to be focusing on is the French presidential election of 2017. The two main candidates in the election were Emmanuel Macron, a centrist and Marine Le Pen, a far right politician. Emmanuel Macron won the election with a Pro-European Union policy, many people saw him as being a better option of the two candidates, he didn’t have widespread popularity in the country but despite this won 66.1 percent of the vote (Aisch). His centrist political beliefs helped him to win the votes of people who were not sure on who to vote for. His opponent Marine Le Pen is anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, anti-EU, and especially popular in areas with high unemployment (specifically the Northeast and the Southeast). Despite her loss, Her gaining of 33.9% of the vote in the election shows the rise and popularity of the far right in France (Aisch).
Overall, the elections of both nations were democrat in nature, though the popularity of the winner in the election is quite different. In the Tunisian election, the populist candidate Kais Saied was especially popular with young people and he won a landslide victory over his opponents. He also did very little campaigning which is quite rare in core countries where candidates often campaign heavily. On the other hand, Macron does not enjoy large levels of popularity. Macron was seen as the best of two options for most voters, who were either too far to the left, or not far enough to the right to vote for Le Pen. Macron is also a centrist who leans to the left, while Saied is a far conservative more like Le Pen. Also the accusations made by Nabil Kouri in the Tunisian election and the anti-LGBTQ action of banning Baatour show the growing pains of democracy in Tunisia.
Map 1: Tunisia 2019 Election: (Red is Karoui, Green is Saied).
Map 2: France 2017: (Blue is Macron, Yellow is Le Pen).
Work Cited:
Yerkes, Sarah. “Tunisia's Elections, Explained: The World's Youngest Democracy Votes.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/tunisian-elections-2019#.
“Tunisia Election: Kais Saied to Become President.” BBC News, BBC, 14 Oct. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-50032460.
Flint, Colin, and Peter James Taylor. Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State, and Locality. Routledge, 2018
Aisch, Gregor, et al. “How France Voted.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 May 2017, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/07/world/europe/france-election-results-maps.html.
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