Exit polls predict Kais Saied's re-election in Tunisian presidential election

Exit poll by local media has predicted a landslide victory for Tunisian president Kais Saied in the presidential election with 89.2 percent of the vote, Al Jaseera reported.

Exit poll by local media has predicted a landslide victory for Tunisian president Kais Saied in the presidential election with 89.2 percent of the vote, Al Jaseera reported. Saied, 66, faced two rivals in the election namely former ally turned critic and Chaab party leader Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, and businessman Ayachi Zammel, 47, who was considered a significant threat to Saied's re-election until he was jailed last month, Al Jazeera reported.

Voting in Tunisia's presidential election ended with no real opposition to incumbent Kais Saied. According to Al Jaseera, the exit poll predicted a 3.9 vote percentile for Maghzaoui and 6.9 percent for Zammel.

Preliminary results should come no later than Wednesday but may be known earlier, according to the Independent High Authority for Elections of Tunisia (ISIE), as per Al Jazeera. Voter turnout stood at 27.7 per cent, slightly below the expected. The board's spokesman, Mohamed Tlili Mansri, said earlier that they were expecting around a 30 per cent turnout.

Senior figures from the country's most prominent political parties, who largely oppose Saied, have faced imprisonment on various charges and have not publicly backed any of the three candidates on the ballot. Jailed opposition figures include Rached Ghannouchi, the head of the opposition Ennahda party, which dominated politics after the 2011 "Arab Spring" protests to oust President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

According to rights groups, since 2019, when Saied was elected, the president has undone democratic gains for the country that were secured through the revolution, Al Jaseera reported. As per Al Jaseera, however, Saied rejected the criticism and argued that his actions were to fight the corrupt elite and traitors.

Political tensions in the country grew ahead of the election after an electoral commission named by the president disqualified three candidates amid protests by opposition and civil society groups. At the same time, Tunisia is experiencing weak economic growth, high inflation, and unemployment, which have also caused protests. Last week, lawmakers loyal to Saied stripped the administrative court of authority over election disputes.

The court is seen as the country's last independent judicial body after Saied dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council and dismissed several judges in 2022. Saied dissolved the elected parliament in 2021 and rewrote the constitution in a move the opposition dubbed a coup. The rewritten constitution was put to a referendum vote and passed with a voter turnout of only 30 per cent. The January run-off for the new parliament Saied created with that constitution only achieved an 11 per cent voter turnout. (ANI)

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