Tunisia: Voting ends as President Saied eyes re-election

Tunisia’s presidential election concluded Sunday night, with voting expected to secure another five-year term for incumbent President Kais Saied.

The election took place amid concerns over Saied’s tightening grip on power, especially after a major political overhaul three years ago.

Many of Saied’s key critics, including at least one contender for the presidency, remain behind bars.

Saied, who was first elected democratically in 2019, staged a controversial power grab in 2021, dissolving parliament and rewriting the constitution.

Critics, including rights groups, fear that his re-election could further entrench his authority and weaken Tunisia’s democratic institutions, which had been a rare success story from the Arab Spring uprisings that toppled autocratic regimes in the region.

In a speech on Thursday, Saied called for a “massive turnout to vote” and usher in what he called an era of “reconstruction”.

The Tunisian electoral board, ISIE, has said about 9.7 million people were eligible to vote, in a country whose population is around 12 million.

The board’s spokesman Mohamed Tlili Mansri later said it was expecting around 30 percent turnout. That is roughly the same proportion of people who turned out in 2022 for a widely boycotted referendum on the new constitution.

READ MORE FROM: NIGERIAN TRIBUNE