{"id":41017,"date":"2019-09-30T08:22:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T08:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41017"},"modified":"2019-09-30T08:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T08:22:40","slug":"tunisias-presidential-vote-pits-professor-vs-prisoner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41017","title":{"rendered":"Tunisia\u2019s presidential vote pits professor vs. prisoner"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nNABEUL, TUNISIA:\u00a0The professor refuses to campaign for president and the prisoner cannot, yet both are running for Tunisia\u2019s highest office.<\/p>\n

\nTunisian voters sent two political outsiders into the presidential runoff, forcing a choice between an obscure conservative law professor who believes Tunisians know enough about him already and a media magnate whose face is plastered over posters nationwide, but who has been in jail for the last month on corruption allegations.<\/p>\n

\nProf. Kais Saied is refusing to hold rallies, print posters or use any of the usual marketing that drives a modern presidential campaign. He won the first round on Sept. 15, with 18 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n

\nIn second with 15 percent support was Nabil Karaoui, a jailed mogul who sends out Facebook missives and letters via his wife and lawyers but otherwise must reply upon supporters and his longstanding reputation as the head of a charity that hands out macaroni and other gifts to the poor \u2014 or potential voters, depending on your perspective. He denies the charges, claiming they aim to hurt him at the polls.<\/p>\n

\nThose results mean that fewer than one in five who voted in the first presidential round will actually get the leader they wanted, a major test for Tunisia\u2019s young democracy.<\/p>\n

\nThe North African nation on the Mediterranean Sea was the fountainhead of the 2011 Arab Spring protests, touched off by the self-immolation of a young fruit vendor. It has already elected one president, who died this summer at 92. It has also elected a Parliament, dominated by the Islamist Ennahdha party. But Ennahdha\u2019s candidate was resoundingly defeated in the first presidential round on Sept. 15 \u2014 a message the party has acknowledged as it threw its support behind Saied.<\/p>\n

\nIn the midst of the campaigning for the second tour, the authoritarian leader ousted in the 2011 protests, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, died last week, soon after the defeat of the candidate most saw as an emblem of nostalgia for his regime.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cTunisia is not immune to what’s happening in the rest of the world,\u201d said Jaouher Mghirbi, head of the parliamentary list for Karaoui\u2019s Heart of Tunisia party in Nebeul, a region outside the capital where the absent candidate fared unusually well. \u201cThis is a message from the citizens that they did not trust the system. We have to analyze it, because the survival of democracy depends upon it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSaied, who speaks an almost mono-tonal classical Arabic in public rather than the Tunisian dialect of every other candidate, does not seem to see it in such stark terms. Known as a methodical scholar of constitutional law, he lacks political party, personal charisma and social media presence. He refused to acknowledge that he even has an opponent and does not campaign, but he has the support of legions of young Tunisians who spread their enthusiasm on Twitter and their elders who project on him their hopes for the future.<\/p>\n

\nWhat he offers \u2014 in addition to his reputation as a leading conservative intellectual \u2014 is a blank slate.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe will be the enemy of no one, we will be the enemy of nothing. What is most important is the next stage, a stage of construction, or reconstruction of the country,\u201d he said after the first-round results.<\/p>\n

\nIn the city of Ben Gardane, the economy all but died after the 2011 protests in Tunisia and the subsequent uprising in nearby Libya degenerated into a free-for-all among warring militias. The town\u2019s roads are pitted, dusty, and lined with empty storefronts. Khalifa Mars, an unemployed 56-year-old, said he voted for Saied.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI think he will give more to our country to develop it and especially to develop the economy,\u201d he told The Associated Press. \u201cWe live in the city of Ben Gardane, a forgotten city, a city that has no source of jobs, no industry, an almost Saharan city, next to the sea, but no industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nTunisia\u2019s election commission has set Oct. 13 for the presidential runoff. Karaoui\u2019s next court date is Oct. 2 at the earliest, giving him at best 11 days to campaign. Election authorities have said he can debate Saied via a live feed from his cell, if necessary.<\/p>\n

\nIn a van plastered with peeling stickers bearing Karaoui\u2019s face, Mghirbi recently ventured into one of the poor neighborhoods that serve as Karaoui\u2019s base. He was mobbed by ululating supporters as he passed around posters and stickers. The party promises solidarity and development, but has no concrete plans to improve Tunisia\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

\nAround a third of all of Tunisia\u2019s young people are unemployed and large swathes of its rural center have no electricity, drinking water or functioning schools.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAt least Karaoui gives us macaroni. The others did nothing,\u201d one woman shouted as she waved a red flier on an unpaved road.<\/p>\n

\nBut the absence of Karaoui, who has been compared to Italy\u2019s Silvio Berlusconi, clearly weighed upon Mghirbi.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cEverywhere in the world, electing a leader means electing the person,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nAs Tunisia awaits its next leader, massive challenges lie ahead for this nation of 11.5 million people.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cWe\u2019re living in difficult times,\u201d said Mars. \u201cGod willing, we want someone who will change our situation and do some good for our country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NABEUL, TUNISIA:\u00a0The professor refuses to campaign for president and the prisoner cannot, yet both are running for Tunisia\u2019s highest office. Tunisian voters sent two political outsiders into the presidential runoff, forcing a choice between an obscure conservative law professor who believes Tunisians know enough about him already and a media magnate whose face is plastered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}