Tunisia sets presidential election runoff for Oct.13

Tunisia’s electoral commission said on Wednesday the country’s presidential election runoff would take place on Oct.13 despite calls to postpone the vote by the party of a jailed frontrunner.

ISIE said campaigning would kick off Thursday for the second and final round of voting, which will see imprisoned media mogul Nabil Karoui face off against independent law professor Kais Saied.

“ISIE can neither advance nor postpone the date of the elections under the constitution,” commission head Nabil Baffoun said.

The spokesman for Karoui, who has been detained since Aug.23 on charges of money laundering and tax evasion, had called on Tuesday night for a suspension of the vote as long as the candidate remains behind bars.

That came as Tunisia’s court of appeal rejected a fresh request for Karoui’s release.

ISIE, international observers and political leaders have called for Karoui to be allowed to campaign fairly.

“We have made every effort to ensure equal opportunities,” Baffoun said.

“We sent letters to the justice ministry, the prosecutor general and even the judge in charge of the case to give Nabil Karoui the opportunity to speak in the media, or even to release him.” The timing of Karoui’s arrest, 10 days before the start of campaigning, raised questions about the politicisation of the judicial process.

Despite the legal proceedings, Karoui’s candidacy was approved by ISIE and he campaigned by proxy via the Nessma television channel he founded and through his wife.

After the first round of voting on Sept.15, Saied led with 18.4 per cent of votes, according to ISIE, with Karoui in second with 15.6 per cent.

The annoyance among voters in the hilltop town of al-Alia shows the dilemma facing Tunisia’s moderate hardliner Ennahda party as it seeks to win Sunday’s parliamentary election after years of sharing power with the secular political elite.

Ennahda’s fate will not only resonate in Tunisia. Its effort to chart a moderate path is being watched across an Arab world that has for decades failed to peacefully accommodate its hardliner and nationalist movements.

“Ennahda’s sympathisers abandoned it because of its concessions and only its own people are left,” said Mohammed Amin, 35, a truck driver sitting under a tree near an Ennahda election stand opposite the town hall.

Ennahda’s national vote share has steadily fallen since Tunisia’s first free election in 2011, raising questions over its strategy and ideology as it seeks to recover from a presidential vote last month in which it came third.

Where once it could rely on the support of Tunisia’s socially conservative, less developed interior, it now faces a challenge from populist outsiders who challenge the main parties over poverty.

Having disappointed Islamists by rebranding itself a “Muslim democrat” party, and poor Tunisians by joining governments that failed to improve their lot, it is trying to woo back its base.

But after years in government making the compromises it saw as necessary to maintain social order and tackle deficits, it cannot easily regain its old, popular image as a party of revolution without rejecting its own recent history.

It has embraced Kais Said, a socially conservative law professor who as an independent candidate got most votes in the first round of the presidential election, formally backing him in the Oct.13 second-round runoff.

In doing so, it is also positioning itself against Said’s opponent, the television mogul Nabil Karoui, who faces trial for tax evasion and money laundering, which he denies.

Karoui has for years used his television station and his anti-poverty charity to develop an image as the champion of Tunisia’s poor, though his rivals paint him corrupt for his personal wealth and ties to the old ruling elite.

In al-Alia, a party stronghold in one of the regions where its vote has fallen most steeply, Ennahda activists blamed Karoui for their problems.

“He worked for three years targeting poverty and he is what led to the reverses for all parties, not just Ennahda,” said party member Mehdi al-Habib.

Last week veteran Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi ripped into Karoui at a news conference, promoting the advantages of any future alliance between Said and Ennahda MPs.

Agencies