Tunisia election updates: Polls close after low turnout

On Sunday, the Tunisian Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) will announce the results, but statistics show that the majority of voters were male (68 percent). Youth mostly stayed away from the polls, as 70 percent of voters were older than 45.

Observers from various organisations commented that they had not seen voter levels per centre rise above double figures at any given moment.

Polling centres had more members of the media, poll workers and security officers than voters.

Zyna Mejri of fact-checking service Falso said that despite the electoral silence, candidates continue to campaign online, mostly on Facebook.

“We tend to rely on nongovernment organisations, such as election observers, Mourakiboun, as they are trusted with their honesty and competence,” Mejri said.

Amine Snoussi, a political analyst in Tunis, said the low turnout shows that President Saied’s political project is “doomed to fail” since – contrary to what he thought would happen – the majority of people have not consolidated their political beliefs in political institutions.

“The legitimacy he built on all the actions he did since two years ago was that he wanted to build back political belief in the system, in the presidency, in parliament,” Snoussi told Al Jazeera.

“One of his main arguments was that people did not want the previous parliament. And now what we are seeing is that people do not want Kais Saied’s project of a parliamentary system that is not really effective.”

Polls have closed at 6pm local time (17:00 GMT) amid an unprecedented low voter turnout at about seven percent.

“The story tonight is not about who is going to be in parliament, because it no longer has a bigger say than the president who has consolidated powers over the past few months, but about the voter turnout which is going to give us an indication about the general sentiment among Tunisians who are pretty much concerned about the future of their country,” Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said.

“The opposition has boycotted the election. The biggest and most powerful trade union, UGTT, decided it won’t take part in this political process and has been very critical of President Saied.

“The economy has been in tatters over the last two years, inflation is at its highest at 10 percent, [and] food prices have been skyrocketing. And this explains why people over the last few weeks lost hope in the political process and why voter turnout still stands at seven percent, an unprecedented low turnout in Tunisia,” Ahelbarra said.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra said the dismal reaction of the majority of Tunisians towards the elections is an indication of what will happen to the country’s future.

“We’re going to see a parliament where political parties won’t have any say,” he said, speaking from Tunis. “We’re going to see a government that does not really have a bigger say, and the president consolidating powers.”

The low turnout is a message to President Saied that people are not excited about what is happening in the country and are concerned about the political changes he made over the last year.

“The months ahead will be challenging for Saied who still insists what he did was for the sake of preventing the country from descending into civil war because he said the consensus politics was not producing any progress for his country,” Ahelbarra said.

Electoral board president Farouk Bouasker announced that at 4pm (15:00 GMT), 656,915 voters had cast their ballots. That’s just a little more than seven percent of eligible voters.

Tunisian data science company Insights TN said the figure represents less than half of the number of votes cast at the same point in the 2019 legislative elections, which was 1.5 million.

Insights TN said it is unlikely that turnout will reach one million of Tunisia’s nine million registered voters by the time polls close at 6pm (17:00 GMT).

Saida Ounissi, a former Tunisian legislator for the Ennahdha party, told Al Jazeera that the low turnout for the parliamentary elections is a “major confirmation” of the disinterest of the majority of Tunisians towards the political roadmap launched by Saied.

“The numbers cannot lie and today was one of the biggest trials to see whether the population endorses the whole process after the coup staged in 2021,” Ounissi said, speaking from the capital Tunis.

The disconnection between the concerns of the president of the republic and the expectations of the majority of the population is not surprising, she continued.

“People are concerned about economic issues and social reforms,” she said. “The issue is not a problem of institutions or a problem of politics, it is about making economic choices and this is the conversation we need to be having in Tunisia and we are not having.

“It’s impossible to have in an authoritarian context because most of the people when it comes to giving their opinions today are quite afraid because freedom of expression – there’s a range of regulations that actively keep people silent. “

Election observers at the Mourakiboun network have reported cases of vote buying at voting centres in the central provincial capital of Gafsa, Sbeitla in the west and in the city of Nabeul on the coast of the Cape Bon peninsula.

Observers in Sbeitla reported a heated verbal exchange between supporters of different candidates that came to blows.

They said Saturday morning’s turnout was just 2 percent of voters.

Tunisia’s president has hailed the parliamentary vote as a historic opportunity for Tunisia, amid calls by opposition parties to boycott the election.

“I address all Tunisians and voters to say that on the revolution anniversary, this is your historic chance,” Saied said in a televised address outside a polling station. “So do not lose this chance and listen to your conscience in order to regain your legitimate rights.”

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Tunis, said 270,000 Tunisians had so far cast their ballot, a “really low” turnout compared with past elections.

“This, perhaps, explains why [Saied] made these comments,” Ahelbarra said.

Turnout is expected to be “minuscule,” much lower than in previous elections, Monica Marks, a professor of Middle East politics at New York University, Abu Dhabi, told Al Jazeera from Tunis.

Tunisians feel the election is “a sham and that they’ve lost control of the process, but they are so focused on basic necessities that they don’t have the energy to go out and make another revolution,” Marks said.

“They are so proud of their revolution in 2011 but they are concerned about whether going out to the streets again will actually improve their situation,” she added. Many instead are opting to wait and see what Saied will do to alleviate their problems.

Opposition leaders in Tunisia – who have largely boycotted Saturday’s polls – say they hope to be able to take the general disenchantment felt by the public and channel it into a return to democracy, as they would see it.

“People are very depressed right now, they’ve suffered a lot,” National Salvation Front leader, 78-year-old Najib Chebbi, told Al Jazeera.

Chebbi said he remains optimistic about Tunisia’s democratic future.

“It’s quite normal for a country in a democratic transition to go through these periods of reversal,” Chebbi said. “It’s very difficult to kill the spirit of democracy. Tunisia is a pluralistic society with diverse opinions and media.”

Read more: Opposition hopes democratic ideals can return in Tunisia

In Sidi Bouzid, where the Tunisian revolution began in 2010, there is a sense of dissatisfaction with the progress made since.

Many Tunisians are far more focused on a growing economic crisis and threats to public finances that have caused salary delays and the risk of shortages of key subsidised goods.

Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig reports from the city.

The Essential Middle East podcast dissects Tunisia’s parliamentary elections and why they created uncertainty among citizens.

Saturday’s vote is the first parliamentary vote since 2019, and the first since President Kais Saied dissolved parliament last year.

The Tunisian opposition has decried Saied’s moves as a “coup”, but he says they were necessary to fight back against what he describes as a “corrupt” political elite.

Many Tunisians fear the country is sliding back towards authoritarianism 10 years on from the 2011 revolution that overthrew longtime leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and ushered in a period of democracy.

Read more here.

Farouk Bouasker, the president of the higher electoral authority (ISIE), has hailed what he called the “positive and respectable” number of voters who turned out in the first two hours of voting on Saturday.

The statement stood in contrast to the small trickle of voters seen at polling stations across the country.

Bouasker said that in the first two hours of voting, 270,032 voters were counted out of 9.3 million registered voters. He added that voters were registered automatically as was the case for the July 25 referendum.

The election chief looked visibly flustered when challenged about the reduced numbers of election observers from previous polls, saying “there’s not much difference in the number of observers than previous elections”.

This conflicts with the fact that the EU did not send a delegation of observers, as it had in previous elections. Even local observer Mourakiboun has said the network is running a smaller observation programme this year.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Monica Marks, a professor of Middle East politics at New York University, Abu Dhabi, said there is a “mood of exhaustion” in Tunisia amid its unprecedented economic crisis.

“I would describe the mood on the street here almost as comatose sarcasm,” she said. “Everyone says ‘what election?’ when you ask them what they’re planning to do here on election day, either because they simply don’t know that there’s an election … or because they know perfectly well that there’s an election, but they view it as a masquerade and are coping through sarcasm.”

That exhaustion extends to any possible efforts to again rise up for change, she added.

“A lot of Tunisians are jaded about the fruits from the revolutionary tree that most of them were able to eat over the past decade,” she said. “They say they’re so proud of their revolution in 2011, but they’re concerned about going out on the streets again, is that going to actually improve their situation?”

Shortly after 10am (09:00 GMT), only one voter was present at a polling site the working class district of El Aouina.

“I’m the only one in my friend group voting today, I feel it is my duty as a Tunisian to vote,” said 24-year-old Mohammed Ali, an olive farmer who works in the Cap Bon region but lives in Al Aouina. He said as a farmer he is deeply concerned about the rapidly rising prices of agricultural products for his work “every thing is very expensive now” he said.

However he was suprised that there was only one choice of candidate “there used to be a lot of different candidates to choose from before.”

According to election rules, single candidates will be declared the winner of their seat, regardless of the number of votes cast.

About 20 minutes later, another seven, mostly older people showed up to vote.

More than 1,000 candidates are running in this year’s parliamentary elections compared with 15,500 in 2019.

Under the new rules, political parties can no longer run campaigns or fund candidates. Instead, all candidates must run as individuals and fund campaigns themselves.

Previously, Tunisia’s parliamentary elections were based on a proportional representation list system, and the state provided funds to give a broader scope of candidates a chance to run for office.

Twelve political parties, including the Muslim democratic Ennahdha and the centrist Qalb Tounes, which together held the largest bloc in the old parliament, have boycotted the election. The powerful labour union UGTT also said it rejected the election process entirely.

Read more: Tunisians trickle in to vote in elections as opposition boycotts

Reporting from Tunis, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra says only about 25 to 30 people have voted at the polling site where he has been stationed for two hours since polls opened at 8am (07:00 GMT).

“We are definitely moving towards the lowest voter turnout in Tunisia since 12 years ago, when the country inspired the Arab Spring and moved towards one of the most vibrant, active political systems in its modern time,” Ahelbarra said.

“People are not excited for the simple reason that this is the first time in 12 years that Tunisia would have a parliament that does not really have a bigger say, all the authorities and power have been consolidated under the authority of President Kais Saied,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Elizia Volkmann, meanwhile, reported from Tunis that tensions are rising among organisers as they fear embarrassment over the exceptionally low turnout.

In an interview with Al Jazeera ahead of Tunisia’s parliamentary elections, Moncef Marzouki, Tunisia’s first president after the 2011 revolution, said the country’s current leader was part of a “counter-revolution” and was attempting to return to the pre-revolution political system.

“Once again, [it is] the rule of one man, all the power gathered by one man,” Marzouki said. “And this is exactly what we didn’t want after the revolution … The will of one man has destroyed Iraq, has destroyed Syria, has destroyed Libya.”

Marzouki said he believes that change is inevitable, because of what he argues is the inability of Saied to deliver. But he worries about future protest movements.

“Talking about an Arab Spring is not the most accurate image, [the most accurate image would be] an Arab volcano,” Marzouki added.

Read more: Ex-Tunisian president warns of ‘Arab volcano’ ahead of elections

Food, medicine and fuel shortages have been a recurring theme of Tunisian life throughout 2022.

Many people are angry that after promising so much, President Saied has concentrated on political changes – such as bringing in a new constitution – rather than finding economic solutions to their most pressing needs.

For his part, Saied has previously blamed speculators for the food shortages, but his opponents say he is to blame for failing to revive the country’s economy.

“I’m not sure why there’s no soda pop … lots of products missing, like rice and tea and coffee,” Mohammed, a shelf-stacker at a supermarket in Tunis, told Al Jazeera. “But it’s not just missing products, it’s the prices, look at that bottle of oil, 1.8 litres it’s 18 dinars [$15.7[ now, it was seven or eight dinars [$2.2-$2.5] before, it’s more than doubled.”

Read more: Amid election, Tunisian market shelves are still bare