Nidaa Tounes Comes 1st in Tunisia Polls

Local Editor

Tunisia's Nidaa Tounes Party has won parliamentary elections held to appoint the country's first five-year legislature since the 2011 ouster of former dictator Zine el-Abidine Bin Ali.

Tunisia's election board confirmed on Wednesday night that the secular party Nidaa Tounes had won in the country's parliamentary elections, securing 85 seats and knocking the extremist party Ennahda into second place, with 69 seats.

The winning party is led by Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran politician, who previously served as foreign minister in the 1980s and parliament speaker in the early 1990s under Bin Ali.

Nearly 60 percent of the 5.2 million registered voters participated in the Tunisian parliamentary elections.

The election produced the nation's first five-year parliament following the country's 2011 uprising against Bin Ali.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team