Tunisia’s election authority reported a voter turnout of 27.7 per cent on Sunday night in the country’s presidential election widely expected to return Kais Saied to power, against a 45 per cent turnout in 2019.
The figure is the lowest Tunisia has recorded in a presidential poll since its revolution in 2011.
Polls closed late on Sunday in Tunisia after voting in a presidential election expected to see incumbent Kais Saied secure another five years in office while his main critics — including one contender — are behind bars.
Three years after Saied staged a sweeping power grab, rights group fear re-election will only further entrench his rule in the country, which became the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings.
In a speech on Thursday, Saied called for a “massive turnout to vote” and usher in what he called an era of “reconstruction.”
The Tunisian electoral board, ISIE, has said about 9.7 million people were eligible to vote, in a country whose population is around 12 million. By 1:00 pm — five hours before the 5,000 polling station closed — only 14 percent of voters had cast ballots, ISIE said.
The board’s spokesman Mohamed Tlili Mansri later said it was expecting around 30 percent turnout. That is roughly the same proportion of people who turned out in 2022 for a widely boycotted referendum on the new constitution.
‘Support Kais Saied’
“I came to support Kais Saied,” 69-year-old Nouri Masmoudi said in the morning. “My whole family is going to vote for him.” Hosni Abidi, 40, said he feared electoral fraud. “I don’t want people to choose for me,” he said. “I want to check the box for my candidate myself.”
Tunisia’s electoral board said ahead of the ballot that it would not allow two local independent watchdogs to monitor the vote. By midday in Bab Jedid, a working-class neighbourhood, there were few voters, and most were elderly men. 
Saied cast his vote alongside his wife in the affluent Ennasr neighbourhood, north of Tunis, in the morning.
‘Least bad candidate’
Heavily indebted Tunisia is grappling with weak economic growth, high inflation and unemployment that has led many Tunisians to join mostly sub-Saharan African migrants that use the country as a jumping-off point to Europe.
“Many fear that a new mandate for Saied will only deepen the country’s socio-economic woes, as well as hasten the regime’s authoritarian drift,” the International Crisis Group think tank said.
Yet, voters were presented with almost no alternative to Saied. ISIE barred 14 hopefuls from standing in the race, citing technicalities.
Wajd Harrar, a 22-year-old student, said that in 2019, while she was too young to vote, “people had chosen a bad president.” This time, she said, “I have the right to vote and I will give my vote to the least bad candidate.”
Mohamed Aziz, 21, said he was “motivated by the elections because choosing the right person for the next five years is important”.
On Friday, hundreds of people protested in the capital, some holding signs denouncing Saied as a “Pharaoh manipulating the law.”
Standing against him on Sunday were former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, who backed Saied’s power grab in 2021, and Ayachi Zammel, 47, a little-known businessman who has been in jail since his bid was approved by ISIE last month. Zammel currently faces more than 14 years in prison on accusations of having forged endorsement signatures to enable him to stand in the election.
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