The new Tunisian constitution was approved by 96.4 percent of the participants in a referendum, the head of the ISIE electoral commission said on Tuesday, citing preliminary results.
Just over 2.6 million of the country’s 9.3 million voters supported the new project, ISIE chief Farouk Bouasker told reporters in Tunis.
The new Magna Carta will enshrine extensive powers in the office of President Kaïs Said.
Said declared on Tuesday that the country was moving “from despair to hope.” But the president’s rivals accused the Said-controlled electoral board of “fraud” and said its referendum – which featured an official turnout of just over a quarter of the 9.3 million voters – had ” failed”.
Monday’s vote came a year after the president sacked the government and suspended parliament, in a dramatic blow to the only enduring democracy to emerge from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.
For some Tunisians, Said’s measures raised fears of a return to autocracy. But they were welcomed by others, fed up with high inflation, unemployment, political corruption and a system that, in his opinion, had brought little improvement.
There was little doubt that the “Yes” campaign to pass the new Constitution would win, and an exit poll suggested that the votes cast were overwhelmingly favourable.
Most of Said’s rivals called for a boycott, and while turnout was low, it exceeded the one-off figures many expected: at least 27.5%, according to ISIE, the electoral board.
“Tunisia has entered a new phase,” Said told supporters after the vote closed. “What the Tunisian people have done … is a lesson for the world, and a lesson for history on a scale by which the lessons of history are measured,” he said.
The opposition alliance, the National Salvation Front, accused the electoral board of falsifying turnout figures. FNS chief Ahmed Nejib Chebbi said the figures were “inflated and do not match what observers saw on the ground”.
The electoral board “is not honest or impartial, and its figures are fraudulent,” he said.
“Opacity and illegality”, according to opponents
Said, a 64-year-old law professor, dissolved parliament and seized control of the judiciary and the electoral commission on July 25 last year.
Opponents say the moves were intended to install an autocracy more than a decade after the fall of former dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, while supporters say they were necessary after years of corruption and political turmoil.
“After 10 years of disappointment and total failure in the management of the state and the economy, the Tunisian people wanted to get rid of the old and take a new step, whatever the results,” said Noureddine al-Rezgui, a bailiff.
A state television poll of “Yes” voters suggested that “reforming the country and improving the situation” along with “supporting Kaïs Said/his project” were their main motivations.
Thirteen percent cited being “convinced by the new Constitution.”
Rights groups have warned that the bill gives wide unchecked powers to the presidency, allows it to appoint a government without parliament’s approval and makes it virtually impossible to remove it.
Said Benarbia, regional director of the International Commission of Jurists, told the AFP agency that the new constitution “will give the president almost all powers and dismantle any control over his government.”
“The process was opaque and illegal, the result is illegitimate,” added Benarbia.
In recent months, Said has repeatedly threatened his opponents, issuing video tirades against unidentified enemies whom he describes as “germs”, “snakes” and “traitors”. On Monday he promised to hold accountable “all those who have committed crimes against the country.”
Said can “do now what he wants”
Analyst Abdellatif Hannachi said the results mean Said “can now do whatever he wants without regard to anyone else.”
“The question now is: What is the future of the opposition parties and organizations?” Hanachi said.
Monday’s vote was also seen as an indicator of Said’s personal popularity, nearly three years after the outsider politician won the 2019 presidential election in Tunisia in a landslide, the third since the 2011 revolution.
Tunisia is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections in December. Until then, “Kaïs Said will have more powers than a pharaoh, a caliph from the Middle Ages or the bey of Tunis (from the Ottoman era),” said political scientist Hamadi Redissi.
Turnout in elections has gradually declined since the 2011 revolution, falling from just over half in a parliamentary poll months after Ben Ali’s ouster to 32% in 2019.
*With AFP; adapted from its original English version
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