In with the new in Tunisia polls
– Tunisians began voting yesterday in a presidential runoff pitting a conservative academic against a media magnate fresh out of jail.
The political newcomers swept aside the old guard in the first round.
Adding controversy and suspense to the contest, presidential contender Nabil Karoui only walked free on Wednesday, having spent a month behind bars on suspicion of money laundering.
The vote, Tunisia’s second free presidential poll since the 2011 revolt, follows the death of president Beji Caid Essebsi in July.
The run-off outcome remains uncertain, but Karoui received a boost with his newly formed party, Qalb Tounes, coming second in legislative elections.
Saied topped the first round in the presidential election, held on September 15, with 18.4% of votes, while Karoui followed with 15.6%. Karoui presents himself as a candidate for the poor but spent most of his campaign imprisoned on money laundering and tax evasion charges.
He was released on his fourth appeal in court after threatening to contest the results.
Saied, who is an expert on constitutional law, launched an unorthodox election campaign that saw him shun mass rallies and, instead, canvass door-to-door.
The appeal of Karoui stems largely from his media empire and philanthropic activity.
In 2002, Karoui launched a media agency with his brother.
After the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Nessma TV channel that Karoui founded turned from entertainment programming towards news.
Over the past three years, Karoui’s arrest cemented his status as an outsider – despite being a long-time key supporter of Essebsi, whose death on July 25 brought forward the polls.
But if he wins the run-off, Karoui will receive immunity “and all the legal proceedings against him will be suspended until the end of his mandate”, constitutional law professor Salsabil Klibi said. –
Tunis
Warsaw
Poles began voting yesterday in a polarising election the governing populists look set to win after a flurry of welfare giveaways and attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and western values, but their majority could be at risk.
The opposition received an unexpected last-minute boost when author Olga Tokarczuk, a known government critic who won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, urged Poles to choose wisely “between democracy and authoritarianism,” calling the vote the “most important” since communism fell in 1989.
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