The president of Tunisia wins a landslide second term

According to the electoral commission, President Kais Saied of Tunisia has been elected to a second term with over 90% of the vote in an election that rights groups have denounced.

Just 29% of the more than nine million registered voters cast ballots on Sunday, and just two candidates out of over a dozen other contenders were permitted to face President Saied.

There were almost no public debates or campaign rallies, and the majority of the street-level campaign posters supported the president.

After the government detained and imprisoned dissidents and possible opponents, including one of the two candidates on the ballot, Saied was generally predicted to win.

The Arab world saw a surge of pro-democracy demonstrations in Tunisia in late 2010, which led to the overthrow of longstanding ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali early in 2011.

The nation in North Africa was seen as a regional leader in democracy.

However, since winning election in 2019 on a wave of optimism, Saied, 66, has consolidated power in his own hands, suspended parliament, and changed the constitution.

Saied received 2,438,954 favourable votes, as per the preliminary results, announced the nation’s Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) on Monday night.

Saied’s closest competitor, businessman Ayachi Zammel, earned 7% of the vote despite being sentenced to 12 years in jail for forging paperwork, just five days before the ballot.

The third contender, Zouhair Maghzaoui, got over 2 percent of the vote.

Fearing that the polls would not be free or fair, five major parties had urged their members to abstain from participating.

The final results of the presidential election are scheduled to be published early next month, according to the electoral bureau.

With Ben Ali’s fall in 2011, this was Tunisia’s third presidential election, which took place on Sunday. Before being forced to flee to Saudi Arabia after months of intense protests, he had been in power for more than 20 years.

As unhappiness grows over Saied’s alleged authoritarian style of leadership, rights organization Amnesty International has condemned “a worrying decline in fundamental rights” under his regime.

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