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Ed Webb

Tunisian president wins for 5th time in landslide - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/...af_tunisia_elections

landslide Tunisia election authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Tunisia's president has been re-elected for a fifth, five-year term with 89.62 percent of the vote, the Interior Ministry announced Monday. It was the lowest score won by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali since he took power in a bloodless coup in 1987. Ben Ali was last re-elected in 2004 with more than 94 percent of votes — a drop from his previous victories, which fluctuated between 99.2 and 99.7 percent.
  • largely cosmetic opposition
  • Ben Ali's Constitutional and Democratic Rally, or RCD, which has been continuously in power since Tunisia's independence from France in 1956, won 161 seats. A sprinkling of small opposition and independent parties shared the remaining 53 seats.
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  • even Ben Ali's opponents acknowledge the results he has achieved in this small country that lacks any significant natural resources. Tunisia is expecting 3 percent growth in gross domestic product this year despite the global recession. The country's poverty rate has dropped below 4 percent and it is a regional model in terms of literacy, social welfare and the role women play in society. Rights groups however deplore the country's overbearing police presence and general absence of any real freedom of expression.
Ed Webb

Kais Saied faces a fractured political landscape in Tunisia after win - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ctions-kais-saied-victory.html

Tunisia politics presidency election elections analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Oct 19 - Cached
  • The Oct. 13 landslide victory for outsider presidential candidate Kais Saied was historic by any measure. After an unpredictable contest in which voters appeared determined to purge traditional parties and public figures that have dominated the post-Arab Spring landscape, Tunisian politics has entered a new era –– though exactly what comes next is anyone’s guess.
  • Riding a wave of revolt that was driven by an unorthodox coalition of students, anti-corruption voters and conservatives, Saied rose from relative obscurity little more than a year ago to best an original field of 27 candidates and seize the highest political office in the land.
  • everybody has their own interpretation of the 61-year-old professor’s message.  “Some accuse me of being a Salafist, others of being a radical leftist,” the candidate said critically during the Oct. 11 presidential debate. “But I have always been an independent and will die an independent.”
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  • While some in the crowd expressed uneasiness about Saied’s professed social conservatism, others remained confident that the enigmatic figure could transcend the divide between secularism and Islamism that has defined much of the past decade in Tunisian politics
  • Over two rounds of presidential voting, Tunisia’s post-Arab Spring order was turned upside down as household-name politicians from across the spectrum were toppled. Instead, the electorate turned decisively toward a distinctly Tunisian brand of populism, one focused on combating corruption and alleviating poverty in a nation still reeling from nearly a decade of post-revolution stagnation.
  • Saied campaigned on a maverick platform of anti-corruption measures and radical constitutional changes that would place localized, direct democracy at the center of policymaking.
  • “[Saied] offered ideas and hopes, even though hard to realize, while Karoui offered food and money,” Youssef Cherif, head of the Columbia Global Affairs Center in Tunis, told Al-Monitor.
  • voters between the ages of 18 and 25 proved decisive
  • Despite lofty rhetoric, with promises to return power to the people and remake Tunisian political structures, major questions remain unanswered about a future Saied presidency, his agenda and what type of political bloc could emerge to work with him in what promises to be a badly fractured legislature.
  • In a survey conducted by Tunisian publication Le Manager, Saied had failed to take a clear position on 24 out of 25 current political topics they studied, more than any other candidate. 
  • While Saied’s social conservatism might hint at a possible alliance on some issues with an Ennahda-aligned bloc, analyst Cherif said that many parts of his agenda, particularly those targeting corruption, could put members of the party in its crosshairs.
  • “The fact that he doesn't have a structured political party will complicate things for him, and he might end up isolated in the Presidential Palace of Carthage,”
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