Tunisian president's landslide second-term win confirmed

Tunisian President Kais Saied has won a second five-year term in office, according to official final results announced on Friday.

He garnered 90.7% of the votes cast in the October 6 polls, the electoral commission said, confirming earlier preliminary results.

Opposition parties and human rights groups questioned the fairness of the election.

Serious challengers to Saied, who took office in 2019, were excluded.

Saied's only two rivals in the vote were Ayachi Zammel, a liberal politician, who is in prison in connection to electoral cases, and Zouhair Maghzaoui of the leftist nationalist People's Movement.

Zammel and Maghzaoui received 7.3% and nearly 2% respectively, according to the results.

Voter turnout was put at 28.8% of the overall eligible electorate in the North African country.

The opposition has accused Saied, an ex-law professor, of seeking to establish an autocracy in Tunisia, once considered the sole democratic success story of the 2010-11 Arab Spring revolts.

Since 2021, Saied has consolidated his power by dissolving the parliament and calling early elections, steps that the opposition called a “coup.”

Dozens of opponents have since been arrested, including opposition politicians and journalists over alleged corruption and conspiracy against the state security.

Saied has repeatedly defended his moves, saying they were in line with the constitution and aimed at fighting corruption.