A little-known law professor and a controversial TV personality looked set to compete in a runoff election to become Tunisia’s next president — a resounding rejection of the status quo in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
Interim figures show Kais Saied, a constitutional law expert who has been dubbed “Robot Man” and supported by some of Tunisia’s disenchanted youth, in the lead after securing 18.8 percent of ballots counted in Sunday’s presidential election.
Nabil Karoui, the owner of a TV channel who is competing from prison, has 15.5 percent.
Photo: AP
The election commission gave the figures after tallying 77 percent of votes. The preliminary results were to be announced midday yesterday.
“There is anger, hatred and resentment of the people against the political elites, whether ruling or opposition,” said Sadok Hammami, a Tunisian political analyst.
Many voters believe the “elites betrayed the people and didn’t represent them,” so they chose the insurgent candidates, he said.
Victory for an outsider is a serious upset for Tunisia’s political establishment ahead of legislative elections next month.
While the North African nation has emerged from its uprising with a vibrant democracy, two-thirds of the population say the government has failed to improve their lives.
Since 2011, it has been hobbled by political infighting and sporadic militant attacks that have sapped the economy.
From two dozen diverse contenders, only four — Karoui, Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, Ennahda party deputy leader Abdelfattah Mourou and Tunisian Minister of Defense Abdelkarim Zbidi — had been seen as front-runners.
Mourou is currently in third place, with 12.9 percent of votes counted.
If no one secures more than 50 percent of ballots, the leading two are to compete in a second round, likely next month.
Saied, who is 61 and ran as an independent, has come to be nicknamed “Robot Man,” thanks to his rapid, fact-filled speeches during recent debates.
He had had little media attention until Sunday evening, when an exit poll showed him on course for victory and he declared a “new stage in Tunisia’s history.”
Some of the nation’s youth say they have found inspiration in this austere figure, who campaigned on a platform of decentralizing authority to local communities to empower people.
“Today the youth have regained their confidence via Kais Saied,” said Rayan Ben Souf, a 20-year-old student shopping in Tunis’ central market on Monday. “He is against the system.”
The Robot Man’s success was a shock to most — some have even dubbed him “the unknown president.”
The popularity of Karoui, who ran while incarcerated, was more expected.
A self-proclaimed “champion of the poor,” the 56-year-old has gained fame for shows on his Nessma TV channel in which he distributed charity to Tunisia’s most needy.
He was arrested last month on allegations of money-laundering dating back to 2016, which he denies.
His Heart of Tunisia party calls it an attempt to quell an electoral upstart.
One opinion poll in June suggested Karoui might take votes from the established parties, including Nidaa Tounes, to which former Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi, who died in July, belonged.
Parliament failed in a subsequent bid to pass legislation that would have disqualified candidates with links to charities — a step that would likely have affected him.
A conviction would rule him out of the race, but no trial has yet been set.
“Tunisians want to break with the old system,” Hammami said, comparing some of the circumstances to those that led to the US election of Donald Trump.
“Populists have become an alternative to the traditional political elites,” he said.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees