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The leader of Tunisia’s opposition alliance called for President
Kais Saied
to step down on Sunday after only a fraction of eligible voters turned out for parliamentary elections.
More than 160 seats were up for vote. Yet once polls closed on Saturday night, only 8.8% of eligible voters, or roughly 803,000 people, had participated, according to the government. Tunisia has a population of roughly 12 million people, with about 9 million eligible voters.
“The turnout shows the nation’s disappointment,” National Salvation Front president
Ahmed Nejib Chebbi
said. “It is a true earthquake that shakes the political scene.”
Holding the parliamentary vote was the latest move by Mr. Saied to secure power in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring uprisings started over a decade ago.
Mr. Saied disbanded parliament last year and started ruling by decree, leading opposition parties and some Tunisians to believe he was staging a coup. This summer, the president pushed through a new constitution, then overhauled the country’s electoral law so that he could control the setting up of a new legislature.
As Mr. Saied focuses on consolidating power and neglects an economy that has been in turmoil for the past decade, record numbers of Tunisians are leaving the country to seek better jobs and lives abroad.
Some Tunisians fear the return of the dictatorial rule they endured under
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali,
who was overthrown in 2011, helping spark revolts across the Middle East.
The majority of candidates who ran in Saturday’s elections don’t have a political background and are largely unknown to the populace, as Mr. Saied’s electoral law bars them from running under a political party affiliation, and most opposition parties have chosen to boycott the election.
As Tunisians endure a soaring cost of living after the war in Ukraine pushed up inflation globally, how much support remains for Mr. Saied is unclear. Many Tunisians have given up hopes for a real democracy any time soon and refused to participate in the election.
“There’s a big question mark on the stability of the political system,” said
Hamza Meddeb,
a Tunisia scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
The Free Constitutional Party, one of the opposition parties that boycotted the election, also called for new presidential elections. “He should step down in a civilized way… in a confession that his entire project has failed,” party leader
Abir Moussi
said of Mr. Saied.
Tunisia struck an agreement in October with the staff of the IMF for the international body to provide a nearly $2 billion dollar loan that will require Mr. Saied to curb the increase of public-sector wages, among other moves. The IMF executive committee has yet to give its final approval.
—Mohamed Bliwa contributed to this article.
Write to Chao Deng at chao.deng@wsj.com
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