Tunisian president urged to resign after election debacle
Also: Tunisian parliamentary election records just 8.8% turnout (The Guardian)
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Source: Associated Press
Tunisian president urged to resign after election debacle
By BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA
December 18, 2022
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisian opposition figures called Sunday for the president’s resignation after disastrous parliamentary elections in which less than 9% of voters cast ballots.
The mass voter disavowal was a dramatic development for the country that was the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings against autocratic leaders a decade ago — and the only one to emerge from that upheaval with a democratic political system.
The elections Saturday were meant to replace and reshape a legislature that President Kais Saied dissolved last year. It was one of several moves he has made to consolidate his power and tackle Tunisia’s protracted economic and social crisis.
The election results are expected in the coming days.
Many opposition parties boycotted the vote, and many voters stayed away too.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/tunisia-kais-saied-4741ac99a343157b27d3bd3a3e209776
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Source: The Guardian
Tunisian parliamentary election records just 8.8% turnout
Fall in votes follows President Kais Saied’s suspension of legislature and redrawing of country’s political map
Simon Speakman Cordall
Sun 18 Dec 2022 14.47 GMT
First published on Sat 17 Dec 2022 22.14 GMT
Tunisia has been plunged into political uncertainty after it recorded the lowest electoral turnout in its recent history following President Kais Saied’s suspension of parliament and subsequent redrawing of the country’s political map.
Its main opposition alliance called on Saied to “leave immediately” as voters overwhelmingly snubbed the the legislative election in what officials at the country’s Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Élections (ISIE) said was a participation rate of 8.8%.
Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, president of Tunisia’s “Salvation Front” alliance, which boycotted the vote and has accused Saied of a coup against Tunisia’s democracy said the president had “lost all legal legitimacy”. An abstention rate of more than 91% “shows that very, very few Tunisians support Kais Saied’s approach”, Chebbi told Agence France-Presse.
Since suspending parliament in July of last year, Saied has introduced a new constitution, greatly reducing the prominence of the country’s political parties, who he characterised as enemies of the people. He reserved particular ire for the Ennahda movement, part of the opposition alliance, which has dominated the political scene since the country first led the wave of Arab Spring protests against autocracy in 2011.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/17/tunisian-parliamentary-election-records-just-88-turnout
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