The Tunisian legislator, through legal system related to the new elections, has worked on caring for young people to open the way for them to participate in political life, not only through elections, but also by giving them access to power whether to the presidency of the republic, membership of the Assembly of the People’s Representatives, or membership of local councils is municipal or regional.
1. Running for the Presidency of the Republic:
The Tunisian constitution of 2014 gave the right to those who have reached at least 35 years of age to file for running for the position of President of the Republic of Tunisia, of course, with a set of conditions concerning nationality and endorsement, among others.
2. Candidacy for membership in the Tunisian Parliament:
Candidacy for membership in the Assembly of the Representatives of the People is a right for every Tunisian national, who has been a Tunisian national for at least ten years, completed 23 years of age on the day of submitting their candidacy, provided that they are not included under any form of violations, stipulated by the law. The Tunisian legislator also tried to stress more on the need to include young people in the candidate lists for the legislative elections, as Article 25 of the Tunisian Electoral Law states that every candidate list, for legislative elections in a district that has four or more seats, must include among the first four a male or female candidate who is not older than 35 years old in order to obtain the full grant of public funding for the electoral campaign. If this condition is not fulfilled, the candidate list shall be deprived of half of the total value of the public grant. This stipulation has propelled the majority of candidate lists in the legislative elections, whether party lists, coalitions, or independent, to work as much as possible to include young people in their lists, resulting in a respectable percentage of young people, males and females, in the current and the previous assembly. This has become an impetus for political parties to get youth involved in running for elections.
3. Candidacy for membership of municipal and regional councils:
Article 43 of the Tunisian Electoral Law states that every Tunisian who has voter status and at least 18 years old on the day of submitting their candidacy can run for membership in municipal and regional councils.
As stated in Article 49 tenth of the Tunisian electoral law that every list running for municipal and regional elections must be among the first three in a candidate list or a candidate whose age is not more than 35 years on the day of submitting the application for candidacy. Further, the same article states that each list submitting their candidacy must include among every six candidates consecutively in the rest of the list a male of a female candidate who is not older than 35 years on the day the candidacy application was submitted. The legislator has placed significant value on the representation of young people in municipal councils during the 2017 elections, making the parties attract more youth to integrate them into political life.
The new electoral legal system in Tunisia after the Tunisian revolution of 14 January 2011 tried to accommodate young people much as possible. It worked to put in place many mechanisms in order to encourage young people to participate in political life, whether that was through elections and choosing who represented them or by running for various political public offices within the state.