President Saied, a big favorite, casts his vote in the Tunisian elections

MADRID 6 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The president of Tunisia, Kais Saied, has already cast his vote in the elections that are being held this Sunday in the country and in which he is the outstanding favorite to retain the position despite criticism against his authoritarian drift.

Saied cast his ballot around 11:00 (mainland Spain and Balearic Islands time) at a school in the Nasr neighborhood, in the country’s capital.

Meanwhile, the country’s top electoral official, the president of the Independent High Electoral Authority, Farouk Bouasker, has assured that the elections are taking place normally and denied information that appeared in recent hours about low participation.

“Voters are going to the polls in remarkable numbers,” he said in statements reported by the MosaiqueFM radio station.

Saied, who in the 2019 elections won the second round with 72.7 percent of the votes – compared to 27.3 percent collected by tycoon Nabil Karui, who remained imprisoned for most of the electoral campaign – , has led a campaign of increasing repression since 2021 that has limited civic space, calling into question the representativeness of the elections.

The president faces two candidates of little weight: Zuhair Magzhaui, leader of the People’s Movement (Echaab) – which he has headed since 2013 following the assassination of the then head of the party, Mohamed Brahmi, one of the main leaders of the Tunisian left. –, and Ayachi Zamel, leader of the liberal Azimun party, imprisoned during the electoral campaign.

The country, considered one of the few examples of democratic success after the outbreak of the ‘Arab Spring’, has suffered during the last five years a setback in rights and freedoms that has been attributed to the president, which has led its critics to draw parallels between him and Zine el Abidine ben Ali, who governed the country from 1987 to 2011, and whose long mandate ended precisely with this revolution.