TUNIS: Voting began in Tunisia’s presidential election on Sunday with no real opposition to incumbent Kais Saied, who is widely tipped to win.
The North African country had prided itself for more than a decade for being the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings.
Polling opened at 8am (0700 GMT) and is set to end at 6pm (1700 GMT).
Electoral board ISIE has said preliminary results should come no later than Wednesday but may be known earlier.
At one polling station in central Tunis, AFP reporters saw a group of mostly older men lining up to vote.
Ahead of polling day, there were no campaign rallies or public debates, and nearly all of the campaign posters in city streets have been of Saied.
After rising to power in a landslide in 2019, Saied, now 66, led a sweeping power grab that saw him rewrite the constitution.
ISIE said about 9.7 million people are expected to turn out.
Standing against him Sunday are former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaoui, who backed Saied’s power grab in 2021, and Ayachi Zammel, 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.
In a speech on Thursday, Saied called for a “massive turnout to vote” and usher in what he called an era of “reconstruction”.
He cited “a long war against conspiratorial forces linked to foreign circles”, accusing them of “infiltrating many public services and disrupting hundreds of projects” under his tenure.
The International Crisis Group said that while Saied “enjoys significant support among the working classes, he has been criticised for failing to resolve the country’s deep economic crisis”.
