This blog is now closed, thanks for joining us. These were the updates on Tunisia’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, December 17.
This blog is now closed, thanks for joining us. These were the updates on Tunisia’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, December 17.
- Polls closed at 6pm (17:00 GMT) after controversial parliamentary elections in Tunisia, the first vote since the opposition-controlled chamber was suspended by President Kais Saied in July 2021 and later dissolved.
- The elections were marked by low voter turnout, with 8.8 percent according to the electoral commission.
- The opposition has boycotted Saturday’s election, calling the vote the latest step in Saied’s consolidation of power, which included the passage of a new constitution in August that did away with the country’s hybrid parliamentary democracy.
- The vote is the latest turn in Tunisia’s thorny political saga, with the country initially hailed as a rare Arab Spring success story after the introduction of free and fair elections following the removal of longtime leader President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
- Tunisia has since faced crises in security, politics and economy, with Saturday’s vote coming amid protests and months of food shortages that have highlighted gaping inequalities among the population of nearly 12 million.