Presidential Campaign Gets underway in Tunisia

Local Editor

Campaigning opened Saturday for a presidential election in Tunisia, with secularist Beji Caid Essebsi seen as the front-runner after his party won milestone parliamentary polls.

Essebsi, 87, leads a field of 27 candidates in the November 23 vote, after Nidaa Tounes came out on top in last Sunday's legislative an-Nahda movement .

Tunisians hope both elections will provide much-sought stability nearly four years after the revolution that drove long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fro
m power in 2011.

Presidential candidates include the incumbent, Moncef Marzouki, woman magistrate Kalthoum Kannou and also former Ben Ali ministers.
If no candidate secures an absolute majority on November 23, a second round of voting will take place in late December.

It will be the first time Tunisians have voted freely for their head of state.
Between independence from France in 1956 and the revolution, Tunisia had just two presidents - the "father of independence" Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali who overthrew him in a 1987 coup.

Ben Ali occupied the Carthage Palace until he was himself forced out, this time by people power, fleeing to Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011.
In an effort to prevent a new dictatorship, the new president's powers will be restricted under a constitution adopted in January, with most executive power resting with the premier from the parliamentary majority.

Despite his advanced age, Essebsi remains the favorite to become president.

Under Bourguiba, he held the key portfolios of defense, interior and foreign affairs, and was also parliament chief under Ben Ali in 1990-1991.
Essebsi has vowed to restore the prestige of the state, a pledge that will be popular with many voters in a country destabilized by political, economic and security crises since the revolution.

He will launch his campaign on Sunday at Bourguiba's mausoleum in Monastir, according to Nidaa Tounes .
If Essebsi supporters see him as the only way to block the Islamist rise, his opponents accuse him of being a product of the old regime who seeks to restore it.
An-Nahda is now Tunisia's second largest party after winning 69 of the assembly's 217 seats in the October 26 general election.
Nidaa Tounes - an eclectic coalition of left and center-right politicians, opposition figures and senior people from the ousted Ben Ali regime - won 85 seats.
It has capitalized on the controversial period from late 2011 until early 2014 when the extremist were in power, marked by the emergence of armed extremist groups.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team