TUNIS: The battle for an expected run-off vote for the Tunisian presidency kicked off yesterday even before first round results were in from a landmark post-Arab Spring election.
Veteran anti-Islamist politician Beji Caid Essebsi, whose party placed first in a parliamentary election last month, looked set to fall short of the 50 percent threshold required to win outright, his campaign team conceded.
He is poised to face off against incumbent Moncef Marzouki, a secular politician who has made common cause with the Islamists against what he says is an attempt at a comeback by former loyalists of the autocratic regime overthrown in 2011.
Wasting no time in relaunching the battle after Sunday’s vote, Essebsi said his rival was the candidate of “jihadist Salafists”, to which Marzouki countered by calling for “a debate on policies... not (a campaign of) insults”.
Election officials, who announced a turnout of 64 percent, have until tomorrow to publish the official results.
The election is a milestone for the North African nation, whose ouster of long-time strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali set off a chain of revolts that saw several Arab dictators toppled by citizens demanding democratic reform.
The expected run-off scheduled for late December is likely to be polarising, with Marzouki’s camp portraying him as the last line of defence against a return to the autocratic ways of the old regime, and his opponent deriding him as an Islamist pawn.
In a speech, Marzouki called on “all democratic forces” to back him against Essebsi, who served under both Ben Ali and his predecessor Habib Bourguiba.
“I am now calling on all democratic forces... alongside whom I have campaigned for the past 30 years for a real democracy, for a break with the past, for a genuine civil society and for a separation of powers.”
Marzouki argues that only he can preserve the gains of the uprising, while his critics say he hijacked the spirit of the revolution by allying himself with the moderate Islamist party Ennahda in 2011.
The rule of Ennahda, which came second in the October parliamentary election, was marred by a surge of radical Islamism and the assassination of two leftist politicians by jihadist suspects.
Essebsi insisted yesterday that only he could defend Tunisia against the threat of Islamist extremism.
“The people who voted for Marzouki were the Islamists... that is to say Ennahda members... but also the jihadist Salafists,” he told French radio station RMC.
Asked about the likely run-off, Essebsi said: “Unfortunately there is going to be a split down the middle, with Islamists on one side and then all the democrats and non-Islamists on the other.”
If Essebsi wins he will have to form a coalition government, even with Ennahda, because his Nidaa Tounes party fell short of securing an absolute majority in October.
The rival camps disagree over their balance of support.
AFP
