Landslide win expected for Saied

Tunisian President Kais Saied is on course to win the presidential election with 89.2% of the vote, according to an exit poll aired on state TV, solidifying Saied’s rule after a power grab three years ago. The Independent High Authority for Elections of Tunisia (ISIE) will announce the official results of the election this evening, according to Al Jazeera. Saied (66) was running against two rivals, including his former ally turned critic Chaab Party leader Zouhair Maghzaoui, and Ayachi Zammel, a businessman who was seen as posing a big threat to Saied’s re-election until he was jailed last month. According to the exit poll, Maghzaoui got 3.9% of the vote and Zammel, 6.9%. The ISIE said voter turnout stood at 27.7% in Sunday’s vote. Senior figures from the country’s most prominent political parties, who largely oppose Saied, have faced imprisonment on various charges and have not publicly backed any of the three candidates on the ballot. Jailed opposition figures include Rached Ghannouchi, the head of the opposition Ennahda party, which dominated politics after the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ protests to oust President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. According to rights groups, since 2019, when Saied was elected, the President has undone democratic gains for the country that were secured through the revolution. Saied has rejected the criticism, arguing that his actions were to fight a ‘corrupt elite’ and ‘traitors’.

Tunisian politician Ayachi Zammel, who was set to be a candidate in the north African country's presidential election yesterday, has been jailed for 12 years, his lawyer said, according to a report in the Voice of America. ‘The court in Tunis sentenced Ayachi Zammel to 12 years in prison in four cases’ related to voter endorsements, lawyer Abdessater Messoudi told AFP. The frontrunner in the elections is incumbent President Kais Saied, who was elected in 2019 but later orchestrated a sweeping power grab that included dissolving Parliament and replacing it with a legislature with limited powers. Former lawmaker Zammel heads a small liberal party, and had been one of just two candidates approved by Tunisia's electoral authority ISIE to challenge Saied for the top post. Ahead of the vote, ISIE had rejected the bids of some 14 hopefuls. It eventually presented a final list of just three candidates: Saied, former parliamentarian Zouhair Maghzaoui and businessman Zammel. On 18 September, his lawyer said Zammel had been handed a 20-month prison term for charges related to forging voter endorsements.