Tunisians return to the polls this Sunday to vote in the second round of the legislative elections for a Parliament completely stripped of its powers at the mercy of the current president, Kais Saied, after a first round marked by record low turnout.
Some 262 candidates, including only 34 women, are running for 131 seats in an election in whose first round last month saw only 11.2 percent of registered voters turn out and amid calls for total political reform of the current system imposed by the incumbent.
In fact, the General Union of Tunisian Workers, the country’s most powerful labor union, announced Friday the launch of the so-called National Salvation Initiative in an attempt to dialogue with the government just hours before the second round of the legislative elections.
The union’s secretary general, Nuredin Tabubi, on Friday described the initiative as an attempt to solve decades of constant crises. «This country is drowning and we have no choice but to sit down and talk,» he said at a press conference reported by the Tunisien Numerique portal.
The initiative, necessary according to Tabubi, given the existing fragmentation among the Tunisian political opposition, is for the moment limited to civil organizations such as the National Association of Lawyers, the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights and the Tunisian Forum for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights, although the secretary general has not ruled out the participation of the parties.
Saied has pushed since July 2021 a series of measures to reform Tunisia’s political system, including a constitutional referendum, approved amid opposition boycott, which strengthens the powers of the presidency. The opposition has denounced an authoritarian drift of the president and has demanded his resignation.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
