Tunisian President Kais Saied was set to win the nation’s presidential election with 89.2 percent support despite a low turnout, according to exit polls broadcast on national television on Sunday after the polls closed.
Saied, 66, is expected to win by a landslide, routing his challengers — imprisoned rival Ayachi Zammel, who was set to collect 6.9 percent of the vote, and Zouhair Maghzaoui, with 3.9 percent, independent polling group Sigma Conseil said.
Three years after Saied staged a sweeping power grab, rights groups fear re-election would only further entrench his rule in the nation, the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings.
Photo: EPA-EFE
With the ouster of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisia prided itself on being the birthplace of those regional revolts against authoritarianism, but the north African nation’s path changed dramatically soon after Saied’s election in 2019.
The Tunisian electoral board, ISIE, has said about 9.7 million people were eligible to vote, in a nation whose population is about 12 million.
Only 27.7 percent of voters turned out to cast their ballots, it said. Over 58 percent were men, and 65 percent aged between 36 and 60.
“The vote’s legitimacy is undoubtedly tainted with candidates who could have overshadowed [Saied] being systematically sidelined,” said Hatem Nafti, a political commentator and author of a forthcoming book on the president’s authoritarian rule.
ISIE had barred 14 candidates from joining the race, citing insufficient endorsements, among other technicalities.
Speaking at his campaign office in the capital, Saied warned of “foreign interference” and pledged to “build our country, and we will rid it of the corrupt and conspirators.”
“The results announced by the exit polls are very close to reality,” he told national television. “We will wait for the official results.”
This year’s turnout figure compared with 45 percent in 2019 and is the lowest the nation has recorded in a presidential vote since its 2011 revolution.
The vote’s “democratic legitimacy is indeed weak, but there is no minimum threshold,” north Africa analyst Pierre Vermeren said. “The majority of Tunisians let it happen.”
Hosni Abidi, 40, said he feared fraud after the electoral board also barred two local independent watchdogs from monitoring the vote.
“I don’t want people to choose for me,” he said. “I want to check the box for my candidate myself.”
Saied cast his vote alongside his wife in the affluent Ennasr neighborhood, north of Tunis, in the morning.
Shortly after the exit polls were announced, hundreds of supporters took to the street celebrating his expected win.
“I am convinced by his ideas and his politics,” Oumayma Dhouib, 25, said.
Saied’s 2021 power grab saw him rewrite the constitution and crackdown on dissent, sparking criticism at home and abroad.
Human Rights Watch has said more than “170 people are detained in Tunisia on political grounds or for exercising their fundamental rights.”
Zammel, faces more than 14 years in prison, accused of having forged endorsement signatures to enable him to stand in the election.
Other jailed figures include Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist-inspired opposition party Ennahdha, which dominated political life after the revolution.
Also detained is Abir Moussi, head of the Free Destourian Party, which critics accuse of wanting to bring back the regime that was ousted in 2011.
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