Tunisian president wins second term with landslide

In an election that was criticised by rights groups, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied has won a second term with more than 90 per cent of the vote, the electoral commission has said.

Only two candidates out of more than a dozen other hope­fuls were allowed to stand against President Saied in Sunday’s ballot, where only 29 per cent of the more than nine million registered voters took part.

Saied’s closest challenger, businessman Ayachi Zammel, won seven per cent of the vote despite being sentenced to 12 years in prison for falsifying documents – just five days before the poll.

There were no campaign rallies or public debates, and nearly all the campaign posters in the streets were backing the president.

Five political parties had urged people to boycott the elections in the belief that they would not be free or fair.

Tunisia was where a wave of pro-democracy protests in the Arab world began in late 2010, ousting long-time autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali early the follow­ing year.

The North African country was seen as a beacon of democracy in the region.

But since Saied, a former law professor, was elected on a wave of optimism in 2019, the 66-year-old has suspended parliament, rewritten the constitution and concentrated power into his hands.

He was widely expected to win a second term after the authorities arrested and jailed dissidents as well as potential rivals.

“According to preliminary results, Saied received 2,438,954 favourable votes,” the country’s Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) said on Monday evening.

The third candidate on the ballot, former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaou, received nearly two per cent of the vote.

The final results of the pres­idential election are set to be announced early next month, according to the electoral agency.

Sunday’s vote was Tunisia’s third presidential election since Ben Ali was overthrown in 2011 following months of massive protests. He had been in power for over two decades before he was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2019.

Rights group Amnesty Interna­tional has denounced “a worrying decline in fundamental rights” under Saied’s government as discontent rises over his perceived authoritarian style of governance.

But Saied has rejected the criticism, saying he is fighting a “corrupt elite” and “traitors”.

—BBC