Record low turnout, opposition boycott mar Tunisia elections

TUNIS— Tunisia’s parliamentary election on Saturday witnessed a record-low turnout as most political parties boycotted the polls, denouncing the election as the culmination of President Kais Saied’s march to one-man rule.

Last year, Saied, a former law professor, unseated the government and suspended parts of a 2014 constitution, which was a product of the Arab democratic uprising in 2011. The charter curtailed the president’s powers in favour of parliament and the prime minister.

Tunisia’s previous parliament, which Saied shut down in 2021 as he moved to rule by decree in measures his foes called a coup, was elected with a turnout of about 40 percent.

Saied called Saturday’s legislative vote a “historic day” as he urged Tunisians to cast their ballots.

“It is a historic day by all standards. [The election date] was determined and respected despite all obstacles,” he said after voting at a polling station in the capital Tunis.

However, less than 9 percent of registered voters turned up to cast their ballot on Saturday.

Since the morning, people barely trickled into polling stations. For most of the day, it seemed there were more voting centre staff and security than voters. Observers said numbers crept into the tens, at best.

At 08.05am (07:05 GMT) at a polling station in downtown Tunis, only one woman – local small business owner Manoubia Shagawi – had turned up to vote.

“I want to support my country and to support my president. I want the country to go forward and get better and that’s why I voted today,” she said.

This was in sharp contrast to a group of young women who, when asked if they intended to vote, responded with a resolute “No” and walked off.

Oumaima ben Abdullah, a campaigner with the centre-left Democratic Current party, said: “The active boycott is by people from civil society and political parties.”

Zoubeir Daly, a founding member of the Tunisian election observation association, Mourakiboun, explained that people were effectively staying away from the ballots as a silent protest rather than apathy.

In the capital Tunis, the election process itself went smoothly.

After the polls closed, the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) published the final voter turnout figure of just 8.8 percent of 9.3 million registered voters.

Preliminary results are expected Monday.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK