With little more than two months until Tunisians return to the polls to elect a new president, four women have thrown their names into the hat as candidates and taken the political landscape by storm. Tunisia’s main Islamist party Ennahda announced a few days ago that it would only contest parliamentary elections, leaving the presidential race wide open for the female aspirants.
With little more than two months until Tunisians return to the polls to elect a new president, four women have thrown their names into the hat as candidates and taken the political landscape by storm. Tunisia’s main Islamist party Ennahda announced a few days ago that it would only contest parliamentary elections, leaving the presidential race wide open for the female aspirants.
The women candidates each bring a strong personality and a proven track record to the race. Judge Kalthoum Kennou is a former president of the Association of Tunisian Judges; Badra Gaaloul, a successful military analyst and head of a think tank in Tunis. Amina Mansour al-Karoui is the chair of the Democratic Movement for Reform and Construction Party. Leila Hammami, an economist, is perhaps the most controversial of the quartet. Hammami pledged to reveal sensitive files from the African Development Bank which she alleges prove the bank broke international law.
Bank whistleblower
Hammami was relatively unknown to Tunisian voters but that all changed when the university professor and former African Development Bank employee posted on Facebook in June 2014 that her life was in danger because of accusations she had made against her former employer. Hammami, who holds a degree from the prestigious Sorbonne university in Paris, claims the ADB was leaking information on debt files related to Libya, Tunisia and Egypt to other countries.
The revelations saw Hammami’s popularity rise in the polls, as people sympathised with her struggle. But comments about black Africans being “slaves” in her social media channels have lost her large chunks of that support.
From law to politics
One of the strongest figures in the presidential pack is Judge Kalthoum Kennou. The 55-year-old mother of three has 25 years experience in a complicated judicial system and is seen by analysts as established enough to challenge any male candidate. Judge Kennou plans to obtain the necessary 10,000 signatures from ordinary citizens to run as an independent candidate. “As a Tunisian citizen, I will not accept a consensus president because he will not be the president of Tunisia but rather an obedient servant of the imperialist circles,” Kennou told reporters in Tunis recently. “Some politicians are preparing a conspiracy against the Tunisians and against their free will and their democratic choices. It seems as if there is a kind of political guardianship and I will not allow a Tunisian president to be imposed by some political parties,” she has also said.
Kennou, who has travelled widely throughout Tunisia, plans a low-key campaign. “I have no support from political parties nor do I have any financial support; I only have your love and your trust. I am the daughter of the Tunisian people, and I am from you and for you,” the 55-year-old wrote on Facebook to announce her candidacy for the November 23 presidential elections.
Strong on terrorism
Badra Gaaloul is, like Hammami, less known to voters than Kalthoum Kennou but hopes her heritage will help her. She comes from the same town as Habib Bourguiba and expects to attract followers of Tunisia’s post-independence leader. “I am the daughter and granddaughter of Bourguiba and will not walk backwards,” says Gaaloul. Her main ticket is a strong stance on terrorism. Gaaloul founded the International Center for Strategic, Security and Military Studies where she teaches military sociology. She has accused the government of taking a weak stance towards insurgents in the Chaambi Mountains and chastised Interim President Moncef Marzouki for his offer of reconciliation to the rebels camped in Tunisia’s northern mountains for the last 12 months. “Officials meet in the Council to drink coffee and then they return to their homes without issuing tough decisions to confront terrorism,” Gaaloul said recently.
The military analysts’s strong policies on security give her a powerful ticket amidst the climate of fear in Tunisia but her lack of experience in Tunisian politics may ultimately be her downfall. Gaalouol says she “never took sides” in the past but whether that will convince voters remains to be seen.
First female candidate for the presidency
Amina Mansour al-Karoui has the distinction of being the first women ever to register her candidacy for the presidency. The chair of the Democratic Movement for Reform and Construction Party is the only female candidate to be running for a political party. Her centrist party says it is “aiming at promoting civil awareness, strengthening the culture of national belonging, praising values of work and production, developing educational programmes, and strengthening enlightenment and modernization. Al-Karoui, an economist nicknamed ‘Emma’, says she will focus on gender empowerment if elected.
“My aim is to challenge the marginalization of women mentality and women’s exclusion as well as to provide the attention which women deserve,” says al-Karoui. Her manifesto has still not been released and it is unclear how she will fund her campaign.
Regardles of the outcome in the presidential election, the four women will have proven that something has changed since the revolution. Before, the maximum political position Tunisian women could attain was the position of Minister for Women, a ministerial portfolio that had no influence on the political scene nor on government policies. Now four women dream of reaching the top.
