Democracy flourishing as Tunisians goes to polls
The contest is the third election in the past two months and represents the final stage in the country’s democratic transition since the Arab Spring revolution that overthrew long-ruling president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The presidential poll pitted Beji Caid Essebsi, an 88-year-old minister in previous Tunisian governments, against Moncef Marzouki, a rights activist who became interim president after the revolution. Mr Essebsi was the favourite to win after taking 39 per cent of the vote in last month’s first round and he has promised to restore the “prestige of the state” after the chaotic first years after the revolution were marked by unrest and economic problems.
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Hide AdMr Marzouki, who took 33 per cent of the vote last month, has warned that Mr Essebsi, whose party also won October’s parliamentary election, will bring back the authoritarian policies of the old regimes.
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Alone among the countries that experienced pro-democracy uprisings, Tunisia’s transition has remained on track.
Voting opened at 8am with a heavy security presence, but the morning turnout looked thin at polling stations around the capital. Official preliminary results were not expected until today.
Overnight, one gunman was killed and three arrested after they opened fire on a polling station in the central Kairouan governorate, a defence ministry official said.
Mr Essebsi has dismissed critics who say he would mark a return of the old-regime stalwarts. He says he is the technocrat Tunisia needs after three messy years of an Islamist-led coalition government.
Mr Marzouki, 69, is a former activist who once sought refuge in France during the Ben Ali era. He has painted an Essebsi presidency as a setback for the “Jasmine Revolution” that forced the former leader to flee.
Mr Essebsi’s Nidaa Tounes party reached a deal with the Islamist Ennahda party to overcome a crisis triggered by the murder of two secular leaders last year.
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Hide AdEnnahda stepped down at the start of this year to make way for a technocrat transitional cabinet until the elections. But the Islamists remain a powerful force after winning the second largest number of seats in the new parliament and still have a great deal of backing in the country.
They aren’t officially backing either candidate but are believed to lean toward Mr Marzouki.
“We need a president who looks after the people and is not interested only in power,” said Ibrahim Ktiti, an electrician who voted in the poor Ettadhamen neighbourhood of Tunis. “The old regime won’t make it back. Essebsi never excused himself for all the time he was with Ben Ali.”
Yet many Tunisians tie Mr Marzouki’s own presidency to the Islamist party’s government and the mistakes opponents said it made in controlling the influence of hardline Islamists in one of the Arab world’s most secular countries.
“I’m voting for Beji. The others did nothing for us during three years,” said Zohra Zagoumi, a housewife with three grown and unemployed children, voting in the Manouba district of the capital.
“We need jobs, security and cheaper cost of living.”
The eve of the election was marked by violence, with a shotgun blast wounding a soldier near the city of Kairouan.
Islamic radicals vowed further attacks on security forces in a video that surfaced on social networks on Wednesday, calling on people to boycott the election.
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