Tunisian president denounces 'skeptics' rhetoric' after voting in legislative elections

MADRID, 17 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The president of Tunisia, Kais Saied, has cast his vote in the legislative elections that are being held this Sunday in the country under the boycott of the main opposition, which considers the elections as an exercise of submission to the greater glory of the president.

After casting his vote, accompanied by his wife Ichraf, at a primary school in the Al Nasr neighborhood, the president briefly appeared before the microphones to ask the population to go to the polls and ignore the "rhetoric of skeptics " who oppose the holding of the elections.

Saied announced in July 2021 the dissolution of the Government and the suspension of the Parliament, later dissolved, in the framework of what he described as a response to the protests over the political and economic crisis, unleashing criticism from the Islamist Ennahda party -- the majority in the legislative body-- and other formations and causing alarm among various civil organizations.

The president, who later appointed Najla Buden Romdhane as the new prime minister, has applied measures that were consolidated in the constitutional referendum in July, boycotted by the opposition and which resulted in an expansion of the powers of the Presidency and a reduction in the importance of Parliament.

Thus, the legislative elections appear as the culmination of the 'road map' launched by the president, which includes a new electoral law that reduces the role of political parties and that will imply that voters choose the candidates in the parliamentary elections of individually, rather than a party list.

"That sovereignty be for the Tunisian people, to achieve freedom and dignity, and that the next Parliament enacts laws that express the desires and aspirations of glory, dignity and freedom of the people," said Saied.

"Do not go to vote other than dictated by your conscience, and do not let yourself be harmed by the rhetoric of these skeptics," he added in statements to channel 1 of public television, collected by the Babnet portal.