TUNIS: Tunisia’s incumbent president said he would wait for official results before declaring victory while acknowledging exit polls showing him winning by a landslide in an election Sunday marred by earlier arrests of his opponents.
President Kais Saied’s supporters jubilantly honked and celebrated after voting ended, and public television broadcast images of the president pledging to pursue traitors and those acting against Tunisia, much like he has done throughout his tenure.
“We’re going to cleanse the country of all the corrupt and schemers,” Saied said at his campaign headquarters.
Tunisia’s public television broadcast exit polls from Sigma Conseil. This independent firm has historically published figures not far off official tallies, showing Saied winning more than 89 percent of the vote over imprisoned businessman Ayachi Zammel and Zouhair Maghzaoui, a leftist who supported Saied before running against him.
In the North African country known as the birthplace of the Arab Spring, much of the opposition chose to boycott the election.
They called it a sham, with Saied’s leading critics imprisoned alongside journalists, lawyers, activists, and leading civil society figures.
They emphasized the low turnout in Sunday’s election.
When polling stations closed, only 2.7 million voters, 27.7 percent of the electorate, had cast ballots — far fewer than the 49 percent who participated in the first round of the last presidential race in 2019.
Supporters of the president — who rode anti-establishment backlash to win a first term five years ago — said his second win would send a clear message to the political class that preceded his ascendance.
“We’re tired of the governance we had before. We want a leader who wants to work for Tunisia. This country was on the road to ruin,” said Layla Baccouchi, a Saied supporter.
Celebrating the exit polls at his campaign’s office in the capital, the president warned of “foreign interference” and pledged to “build our country.’’
Hatem Nafti, a political commentator, said Saied would use reelection as a carte blanche for further crackdowns and to “justify more repression.”
“He has promised to get rid of traitors and enemies of Tunisia,” he said. “He will harden his rule.”
In the years since 2011, Tunisia enshrined a new democratic constitution, created a Truth and Dignity Commission to bring justice to citizens tortured under the former regime, and saw its leading civil society groups win the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering political compromise.
But its new leaders could not buoy its struggling economy and quickly became unpopular amid constant political infighting and episodes of violence.
Observers judged the country’s first two post-Arab Spring elections as free and fair.
