Polling stations closed in Tunisia, incumbent candidate is favourite

Photo: Via Agence France-Presse This photo released by the Tunisian presidency shows Tunisian President Kais Saied dipping his finger in ink after casting his vote at a polling station during the 2024 presidential elections in Tunis, October 6, 2024.

Kaouther Larbi – Agence France-Presse

Published at 11:13 Updated at 14:01

• Middle East

Polling stations closed Sunday after Tunisia's presidential election, in which incumbent head of state Kais Saied, accused of “authoritarianism,” is considered the favorite after the elimination of his most serious competitors.

Voting was open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with 9.7 million voters, out of 12 million inhabitants, called to the polls.

Preliminary results are expected “by Wednesday at the latest,” according to the electoral authority Isie, but could be known earlier.

In the cradle of the pro-democracy uprisings of the Arab Spring in 2011, only two candidates — second-rate candidates, according to experts — had been authorized to face Mr. Saied, 66, out of an initial 17 candidates, who were rejected for alleged irregularities.

The president of Isie, Farouk Bouasker, announced at midday a turnout of 14.2%.

The turnout “should hover around 30%,” estimated Isie spokesman Mohamed Tlili Mansri, the same level as during the referendum vote promoted in 2022 by Kais Saied to revise the Constitution and reestablish an ultra-presidentialist regime.

An hour before closing, voters continued to arrive at polling stations in central Tunis, but the turnout was lower than when it opened.

“The pace slowed down at midday and then picked up again in the afternoon. But the morning rate remains the highest,” Nouredine Jouini, president of a polling station on Rue de l'Inde, told AFP.

“I came to support Kais Saïed, the whole family is going to vote for him,” Nouri Masmoudi, 69, said at the opening. In the morning, voters were mostly middle-aged or elderly, while in the afternoon, there were more women but very few young people.

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M. Saied voted with his wife in the wealthy Ennasr neighborhood.

The “least worst”

The outgoing president faced two competitors: Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, a former MP from the pan-Arabist left, and Ayachi Zammel, 47, a liberal industrialist unknown to the general public, who was unable to campaign because he has been imprisoned since the beginning of September and is facing three sentences of more than 14 years in prison for suspicion of false endorsements.

Voting in the city centre, Hosni Abidi, 40, said he feared manipulation of the ballot boxes: “I don't want people to choose for me, I want to check the box for my candidate myself.”

A supporter of a sovereignist left-wing project similar to President Saied and considered a “stooge”, Mr Maghzaoui called on Tunisians “to vote en masse”, by submitting his bulletin all smiles under the flashes of the photographers.

Wajd Harrar, a 22-year-old student who was “too young to vote” five years ago, believes that at the time, “people chose a bad” president and said she wanted to “give their vote to the least worst candidate.”

President Saied “locked down the election” and is expected to “win hands down,” says International Crisis Group expert Michaël Ayari.

The very selection of candidates has been contested for the high number of endorsements required, the imprisonment of well-known potential candidates, and the ousting by ISIE of the president’s strongest rivals.

M. Saied, elected in 2019 with nearly 73% of the vote (and 58% turnout), was still popular when this constitutional law specialist with an incorruptible image seized full powers in the summer of 2021, promising order in the face of political instability.

Three years later, many Tunisians criticize him for having devoted too much energy to settling scores with his opponents, in particular the Islamo-conservative Ennahdha party, which dominated during the decade of democracy following the overthrow of dictator Ben Ali in 2011.

“New Tunisia”

Since 2021, Tunisian and foreign NGOs and the opposition, whose leading figures have been arrested, have denounced an “authoritarian drift” by Mr. Saied, through a dismantling of checks and balances and a stifling of civil society with arrests of trade unionists, activists, lawyers and political columnists.

According to Human Rights Watch, “more than 170 people are currently detained for political reasons or for exercising their fundamental rights.”

President Saied still enjoys “significant support among the working classes,” according to Mr. Ayari, but he is “criticized for his inability to pull the country out of a deep economic crisis.”

Before the vote, Mr. Saied promised a “crossing […] towards a new Tunisia” in the next five years, after a first term devoted to fighting “against the forces of conspiracy under foreign influence” that had “infiltrated many public services and disrupted hundreds of projects.”