Tunisian President Kais Saied has underestimated the importance of the massive boycott of legislative elections that the country has recently witnessed.
And Tunisia’s electoral authorities have officially announced that the turnout rate in the legislative elections on December 17 has been capped at 11.2 percent, which is slightly higher than the initial rate of 8.8 percent announced when the polls closed.
This participation rate is the lowest since the revolution that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
And the Tunisian president said during the meeting at the Carthage Palace with Prime Minister Naglaa Boudin and some ministers, including the defense minister and security officials, that “a 9 or 12 percent stake is better than 99 for hundred in which congratulatory telegrams arrived from abroad and those capitals knew that those elections had been rigged”.
“We need congratulatory telegrams from the Tunisian people,” he added.
Saeed sharply addressed his opponents and critics without naming them, saying, “It is happening these days from those who are immersed to the hilt in corruption and treachery, who take over, day and night, bashing state institutions and insulting the authority and the symbols of the state, and this insult rises to the rank of a conspiracy against the internal and external security of the state”.
“These conditions cannot continue and these people will not remain without punishment within the framework of the law,” added the Tunisian president.
Regarding shortages of basic foodstuffs, he accused his opponents of “manufacturing crises, and their rhetoric about the crisis is to incite against state institutions.”
On the other hand, Saied denied any decline in freedoms and rights in Tunisia since he took power, saying: “Those who mourn for freedom of expression have no freedom of thought, but they are mercenaries.”
