The Tunisian president, Kaïs Saïed, revalidated his mandate in the elections this Sunday with 90.96% of the votes and only 28.8% participation, below that obtained in 2019, the electoral body (ISIE) announced this Monday.
Imprisoned former MP Ayachi Zammel obtained 7.35% and in third place is the pan-Arab leader of the Popular Movement, Zuhair Magzhaui, with 1.97% support, so there will be no second round.
More than 9.7 million people, out of a population of 12 million, were called to the polls in Tunisia’s third presidential elections since the so-called Arab Spring, during which a process of democratic transition that the opposition now sees in danger.
Reuters
The last similar figure was in 2004, when the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Alioverthrown during the 2011 revolution, reached 94.49%.
He The vote of young people, between 18 and 35 years old, barely reached 6% while in the 2019 election, when he first won, one in ten voted for him.
In 2019, Saied was elected in the second round with 70% support and 56% participation and two years later, in 2021, he was elected full powers to “rectify” the revolutionary process and ending what he calls the “black decade,” the start of the transition that he says was derailed by the economic and political elite.
The president competed in those elections against two unknown opponents after the Justice Department arrested, prosecuted or disqualified prominent candidates who might challenge him.
Criticisms of the electoral process
The election campaign took place with a low profile, no rallies or televised debateswith the presence of Saied in the majority of posters displayed on school walls, and with Zammel in prison for “forgery” of signature and sentenced to 14 years in prison in three different sentences.
The opposition, which demonstrated up to four times last month, refrained from calling for a boycott as in previous elections, despite denounce the lack of transparency and legitimacy elections.
In the preceding days, dissidents, mainly families of so-called political prisoners, opted for Zammel’s vote, which promised their release as well as a new Constitution to replace the current one, described as ultra-presidential and approved in 2022 in a popular referendum with 70% abstention.
The week before the elections, Parliament amended the electoral law by majority vote, stripping the administrative court of the power to resolve electoral disputes after ruling in favor of three candidates, although the electoral body ultimately refused to implement these decisions. after printing the ballot papers. .
After the poll published yesterday, which already gave an overwhelming majority in favor of the president, Saïed joined the party on Sunday evening at his electoral campaign HQ, in the company of his entourage and his wife.
“What Tunisia is experiencing today is the culmination of the revolution”Saied responded by promising to “cleanse the country of corrupt people, skeptics and conspirators.”
Human Rights Watch denounces more than 170 people remain detained for political reasons or to exercise their fundamental rights, around a hundred of them are members and activists of the Islamist Ennahda party, which has remained in power through different alliances since the fall of the Ben Ali regime.
