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Tunisia Votes for President to Round Off Transition

Tunisia Votes for President to Round Off Transition
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Local Editor

Tunisia holds its first multi-candidate presidential election on Sunday in the final stage of a post-revolution transition.

Tunisia Votes for President to Round Off Transition

Twenty-seven candidates are in the running, with former premier Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran of Tunisian politics whose anti-party Nidaa Tounes won an October 26 parliamentary election, the hot favorite.

Among his challengers are outgoing President Moncef Marzouki, several ministers who served under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's longtime ruler who was ousted in a 2011 revolution, leftwinger Hamma Hammami, business magnate Slim Riahi and a lone woman, magistrate Kalthoum Kannou.

A second round is to be contested at the end of December if the winner fails to secure an absolute majority.
Until the revolution the North African country had known only two heads of state: Habib Bourguiba, the "father of independence" from France in 1956, and then Ben Ali who deposed him in a December 7, 1987 coup.

To prevent another dictatorship, presidential powers have been restricted under a new constitution hammered out by political parties across the board and executive prerogatives transferred to a prime minister drawn from the winning party of parliamentary polls.
The clear frontrunner despite his age, Essebsi has run on a campaign of "state prestige", a slogan with wide appeal to Tunisians anxious for an end to instability.
Supporters argue he alone can stand up to the Brotherhood sup[porters who held power in the post-Ben Ali era until his party's election triumph last month, while critics charge he is out to restore the old regime, having served under both Bourguiba and Ben Ali.

Marzouki has been hammering home the argument that he is the only leader capable of preserving the gains of the uprising which swept the country between December 2010 and January 2011.

Ennahda, which came second to Nidaa Tounes in the legislative election but denied its rival a working majority in parliament, is not running its own candidate and has invited its members "to elect a president who will guarantee democracy".
Speculation has been rife on the makeup of a new government and the possibility of a coalition between Nidaa Tounes and Ennahda in spite of their fundamental differences.

Neither party has ruled out the prospect, with Essebsi saying Nidaa Tounes will await the outcome of the presidential poll before opening negotiations with other parties.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

 

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