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Africa North
Tunisia reportedly issues international arrest warrant for ex-President Moncef Marzouki
2021-11-05
[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
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Africa North
“Moderate” Islamist Ennahda Backs Saied In Tunisia's Presidential Run-Off
2019-09-21
[Jpost] Tunisia's largest political party, moderate Islamist Ennahda, will back former law professor Kais Saied in a presidential election run-off, it said on Thursday, potentially boosting his chances against his detained rival, Nabil Karoui.

Saied and media mogul Karoui won the most votes in Sunday's presidential election, beating a number of veteran politicians.

The result was a sharp rejection of the forces that have dominated since the 2011 revolution but failed to address economic problems including high unemployment and inflation.

Saied took 18.4% of the votes and Karoui 15.6%. Ennahda's Abdelfattah Mourou came third with 12.9%.

The field of 26 candidates included the prime minister, two former premiers, a former president and the defence minister.

Ennahda, which was shocked by its defeat, will now throw its weight behind Saied .

"The party has decided to support candidate Kais Saied because he is close to the spirit of the revolution and with clean hands," said Mohammed Ben Salem, a senior Ennahda official.

Several losing conservative candidates, including former president Moncef Marzouki, former premier Hamadi Jebali, and independents Safi Said and Lotfi Mrayhi also backed Saied.

None of the defeated candidates have yet endorsed Karoui.

Little-known before the election, Saied is a professor of constitutional law who ran a modest campaign with next to no publicity or funding, espousing conservative social views while pushing for a return to the principles of the 2011 uprising.

The second round of voting is expected next month after some candidates in the election appealed results.

Karoui, a well-known but controversial figure, is the owner of a major television news channel and founder of a large charity that focuses on the plight of Tunisia's poor.

He was detained weeks before the election over a tax evasion and money laundering case brought three years ago by an independent transparency watchdog.

He denies all wrongdoing and his supporters attribute his arrest to political manipulation. He was unable to take part in televised debates before the vote and electoral monitors have voiced concern that voters have been deprived of a chance to hear him campaign.

A Karoui victory in the second round could raise difficult legal and constitutional questions given his status in detention in a case for which no verdict has yet been delivered.
Related:
Ennahda: 2019-09-18 Outsiders surge in Tunisia’s presidential polls
Ennahda: 2019-09-17 Tunisian establishment reels as outsiders claim election win
Ennahda: 2019-08-24 Tunisian Presidential Candidate Detained over Tax Evasion
Related:
Kais Saied: 2019-09-18 Outsiders surge in Tunisia’s presidential polls
Kais Saied: 2019-09-17 Tunisian establishment reels as outsiders claim election win
Related:
Abdelfattah Mourou: 2019-08-09 Tunisia PM Chahed announces run for president
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Africa North
Tunisian Presidential Candidate Detained over Tax Evasion
2019-08-24
[AAWSAT] A judge ordered on Friday the detention of Tunisian presidential election candidate Nabil Karoui to face charges of tax evasion and money laundering, Mosaique FM radio reported.

Karoui's own Nessma TV channel reported he had been arrested as he travelled to Tunis.

The 56-year-old media magnate is one of the main candidates contesting the Sept 15 election following the death of President Beji Caid Essebsi.

A judge decided in July this year to bar Karoui from travelling abroad after weeks of investigation on suspicion of money laundering.

"Police arrested Karoui while we were on our way back from the city of Beja to Tunis," said Osama Khelifi, a political adviser to the candidate.

The election follows the death of Essebsi last month aged 92.

Tunisia's election commission has approved 26 candidates, including two women. They also include Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and former president Moncef Marzouki.
Related:
Nabil Karoui: 2019-08-09 Tunisia PM Chahed announces run for president
Nabil Karoui: 2011-10-16 Tunisia's Islamist Party Condemns Attack on Chief
Nabil Karoui: 2011-10-15 Tunisians protest 'blasphemous' film
Related:
Beji Caid Essebsi: 2019-08-09 Tunisia PM Chahed announces run for president
Beji Caid Essebsi: 2019-07-26 Tunisia's First Democratically Elected Leader, President Beji Caid Essebsi, Dies at 92
Beji Caid Essebsi: 2019-06-28 Tunisian president Essebsi’s condition ‘stable’
Related:
Moncef Marzouki: 2018-12-01 A secret apparatus for Tunisia’s Ennahda
Moncef Marzouki: 2015-07-31 Former Tunisian president insists no approval for Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi's extradition as lawyers move to sue
Moncef Marzouki: 2015-06-02 International activists en route to break siege on Gaza... again
Related:
Youssef Chahed: 2019-08-09 Tunisia PM Chahed announces run for president
Youssef Chahed: 2019-07-04 Tunisia Says Suspected Mastermind of June 27 Bombings Dead
Youssef Chahed: 2019-06-28 Tunisian president Essebsi’s condition ‘stable’
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Africa North
A secret apparatus for Tunisia’s Ennahda
2018-12-01
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] "I cannot close my eyes as it has become blatant." This is how Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi commented on the presence of a secret security intelligence and terrorist organization affiliated with the Tunisian Brotherhood Ennahda Movement.

In the details, President Beji Caid Essebsi convened with the country’s national security council, a commission linked to the presidency and that handles matters relevant to the Tunisian national security in general, and he was briefed on a folder submitted by the committee defending the two secular Tunisian leaders who opposed Ennahda Movement, Chokri Belaid and Mohammed Brahmi, who were killed in 2013.

Essebsi said that Ennahda’s statement opposing him after his page published details of the meeting with the committee defending Belaid and Brahmi is a "personal threat" against him, i.e. the Tunisian president! He emphasized that he will not allow these threats and will not let Ennahda do as it likes, noting that the judiciary will be the criterion.

The president and the veteran politician then commented on the secret apparatus of Rached Ghannouchi saying: "The entire world now knows this party’s apparatus, and it’s no longer secret!"

What’s more dangerous is that the defense committee provided Essebsi with data of Ennahda’s secret apparatus’ attempt to assassinate him when he was with former French President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
in 2013.

FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE
The Tunisian Ennahda supporters, Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
’s and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...Qatar's colony in Asia Minor....
’s allies and the first line of defense which is "whitewashed with secularism," strongly denied
No, no! Certainly not!
the validity of these accusations and launched a campaign against President Essebsi and his party Nidaa Tounes which prevented Rached Ghannouchi’s group from hijacking Tunisia so it becomes part of the Ottoman Turkish-Qatari Brotherhood camp via using leftist or populist faces such as Moncef Marzouki.

The question is: Is it strange for a Brotherhood group, whether Tunisian or any other, to follow this approach? Is it an uncommon behavior in their political habits and culture?

Didn’t Rached Ghannouchi himself, the symbol of the Brotherhood there, spoke in different ways more than once? One time he spoke as if he’s a liberal as per the western standards and as a dreamer who believes in freedom and democracy.

At another time, he spoke using the tone of the Mujahid sheikh who aims to empower the young who were left powerless on earth and to make them imams and the heirs.

I’ve always said that the "society," which is one of the terms used by Hassan-i Sabbah, the leader of Hashshashin, i.e. the Brotherhood, have found it acceptable to exploit what is pious.

They have statements to make to the public and other statements to make within their closed circles. They have a certain political behavior to follow within the normal contexts and another "jihadist" behavior to practice in secret. They are the Batiniyya of Ahl al-Sunnah.

It’s a common behavior by Brotherhood formations. This is exactly what the founder of the original Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, inaugurated when he blessed the "private secret system."
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Africa North
Former Tunisian president insists no approval for Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi's extradition as lawyers move to sue
2015-07-31
[Libya Herald] The former Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, has moved to distance himself from the death sentence pronounced yesterday in Tripoli
...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn...
on former Qadaffy-era prime minster Al-Baghdadi Al-Mahmoudi.

Mahmoudi, who had fled to Tunisia in 2011, was returned to Libya by the Moslem Brüderbund Ennahda-led government in a controversial deal in June 2012. It was widely claimed at the time that Tunisia was paid $200 million to hand him over. The deal, organised by Tunisia's then prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, caused a major row with Marzouki, who as president was supposed to approve any extraditions.

In a statement following the verdict, Marzouki pointed out that he had not consented to the handover, that he had taken the case to court to prevent the government doing so, had won, but that his prime minister had gone ahead regardless and sent Mahmoudi back to Libya.

Opposing the death sentence, he called on the Libyan authorities not to implement the judgment which he said would impact negatively on Libya's image, on the chances of a national dialogue succeeding and on getting the country out of it current crisis.

Mahmoudi's lawyers in Tunis have said they intend to sue the former Tunisian government for handing him back illegally.
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Africa North
International activists en route to break siege on Gaza... again
2015-06-02
[AlAhram] A fishing trawler from Sweden is set to be joined by up to eight other boats as part of a third Freedom Flotilla
How utterly boring. But perhaps this time it will be Egypt telling them to get themselves to a nunnery, instead of Israel.
A fishing vessel has set sail from Sweden, as part of a new humanitarian aid flotilla to break a nine-year siege on the Israeli-occupied Gazoo strip, five years after a first attempt ended in the death of nine activists.
A naval and land blockade has restricted the movements of people and goods from and to the Gazoo strip, since the Islamist Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, movement won parliamentary elections and became its de-facto ruler in 2006.

As part of the Freedom Flotilla III fleet to break a siege affecting the lives of up to 1.8 million Gazooks, the Marianne boat set off from Sweden on 10 May, with nine people from Sweden and Norway, as well as humanitarian aid, on board.

"This move will serve to break the illegal and inhuman siege on Gazoo," Charlie Andreasson, one of the Swedish activists currently on board the Swedish boat, told Turkish news agency Anadolu.

The boat is set to join other ships from Greece, Norway, Italia, Canada, South Africa, Spain and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
and expected to reach Gazoo by mid-June.

Tunisia's former president Moncef Marzouki is among the human rights
One man's rights are another man's existential threat.
activists and politicians from around the world heading to Gazoo this year, according to the International Freedom Flotilla Coalition statement released on Saturday.

Over the past five years, activists from the International Solidarity Movement supporting Paleostinians have repeatedly attempted to break the siege on Gazoo by arriving by sea on "freedom flotillas" or by land through Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Since the last war on Gazoo, the Karam Abou-Salem cross-border has become the only commercial port for goods and fuel to reach Gazoo.

Repeated attempts
As part of the first Gazoo Freedom Flotilla, six ships headed to the strip in May 2010.

Israeli forces raided the ships in international waters, killing nine activists and injuring dozens others on the Mavi Marmara ship from Turkey on May 31, 2010, sparking tensions between Turkey and Israel. In 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologised to Turkey over the attack.

In 2014, International Criminal Court
... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
chief prosecutor Fatou B. Bensouda said that, although there was a reasonable basis to believe that "war crimes" had been committed," it lacks "sufficient gravity" to come under ICC jurisdiction.

The Greek Coast Guard stopped the boats involved in a second attempt to break the siege in 2011.

Rafah border crossing
Paleostinians have traditionally used the Rafah crossing between Gazoo and Egypt to access education or medical treatment in Egypt and further abroad, but Egyptian authorities have kept the crossing mostly closed since former president Mohammed Morsi's ouster in 2013, citing security concerns in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, where Islamist murderous Moslems have been waging an insurgency against Cairo.

On the rare occasions that the crossing is opened, such as last Tuesday, Paleostinians are allowed into Gazoo, but not out.
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Africa North
Tunisia to Get 8 Black Hawks for Fight against Jihadists
2015-02-27
[AnNahar] Tunisia will take delivery of eight Black Hawk attack helicopters from the United States this year to help it in the fight against Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists, an official said Thursday.

Defense ministry front man Belhassen Oueslati told the private radio station Shems FM that the aircraft would arrive in the second half of 2015.

"These helicopters will be used to carry troops and launch attacks, and will represent a qualitative jump in our means for fighting terrorism," he said.

Tunisia has seen a rise in Islamist extremism since the revolution that ousted veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

An army offensive against jihadists liked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has been underway in the remote Mount Chaambi range near the Algerian border since 2012.

But the ground and air campaign has failed to force out the jihadists amid repeated complaints by the armed forces that they lack the necessary equipment to neutralize the Lion of Islams.

Dozens of police and military personnel have been killed or maimed in attacks blamed on Islamist murderous Moslems around the Chaambi range.

Oueslati did not say how much the helicopters would cost nor give other further details.

In August, then president Moncef Marzouki said during a visit to Washington that Tunisia had asked Washington to provide it with 12 Black Hawk helicopters, also citing the jihadist threat.

Marzouki said at the time that Tunisia would need to wait two or three years before it could take delivery of the aircraft because of their high cost.
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Africa North
Tunisia’s new president pledges reconciliation
2015-01-01
[ARABNEWS] Tunisia's new president pledged a rule of reconciliation and consensus as he took his oath Wednesday before the newly elected parliament to complete the country's democratic transition.

The inauguration of Beji Caid Essebsi, an 88-year-old political veteran, comes in a year in which Tunisians wrote a new constitution and elected a new Parliament and president, ending a transition kicked off by a revolution.

Tunisians overthrew longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 and inspired similar pro-democracy uprisings across North Africa and the Arab world, but only in Tunisia did fierce political rivals find common ground.

The victory of Essebsi, who served under Ben Ali and his predecessor and whose party includes many members of the previous regime, is widely seen as search for stability after the post-revolutionary turmoil.

Essebsi won over 55 percent of the vote Dec. 21 after a campaign marked by bitter exchanges with outgoing president Moncef Marzouki, who feared a return to dictatorship. A human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty...
activist, Marzouki represented the fervor and possibilities of the revolution but his tenure was marked by unrest, terror attacks and economic problems.

"We will work today to replace fear with hope," Essebsi said before parliament as he began his five-year term. "There is no future for Tunisia without consensus and without harmony between all the parties and civil society."

He said his priorities would be to re-establish security and stability, create jobs and fight poverty. Essebsi must now designate a prime minister from his party, Nida Tunis, to form a new coalition government.

The question remains whether the conservatives will be part of any new government.

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Africa North
Elected Leader Says Tunisia Has 'Turned Page'
2014-12-24
[AnNahar] Tunisia's new leader Beji Caid Essebsi said the country has turned the page on dictatorship after a presidential vote that European observers hailed on Tuesday as "credible and transparent."

But outgoing president Moncef Marzouki, who lost the election, said he was creating a new movement to prevent the North African nation sliding back into authoritarian rule after the victory by the veteran politician.

Essebsi, an 88-year-old who served under previous Tunisian regimes, was on Monday declared the winner of a vote seen as a landmark for the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

His election rounded off Tunisia's transition to democracy and has won praise from Western leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama
That's just how white folks will do you....
.
European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
observers reported on Tuesday that Tunisians had voted "for the first time in a credible and transparent presidential election."

The head of the EU mission, Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck, said however that "private television channels had clearly favored the candidate Essebsi." That was in line with complaints from Marzouki during an often bitter and divisive
...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled...
campaign that has raised concerns that Essebsi's victory marks the return of Tunisia's old guard.

But Essebsi, an anti-Islamist lawyer, insisted Tunisia would not turn back history. "I am for completely turning the page on the past, we must go beyond the past and look to the future," he said in a nationally televised interview late on Monday.

Marzouki, a long-exiled 69-year-old former rights activist, has conceded defeat and called for calm after hundreds of his supporters clashed with police on Sunday and Monday. On national television late Monday, Marzouki urged supporters to respect the result and return to their homes "in the name of national unity."

"These are the rules of the democratic process," he said.

However,
there's more than one way to stuff a chicken...
on Tuesday he implied that Tunisia could yet see the return of dictatorship.

"I announce here the launch of the citizens' movement," he told a crowd of supporters from the balcony of his campaign headquarters. He called on "democrats" to unite to "prevent the return of dictatorship" four years after the revolution of January 2011.

"We are again at a crossroads," Marzouki said. "This movement aims to prevent the return of dictatorship, because unfortunately there are some faceless myrmidons among these people who seek a return to the past, and this is a danger for Tunisia.

"Dirty money and biased media cannot change the course of history," he said.

Essebsi is now expected to begin forming a government, after his Nidaa Tounes party won parliamentary polls in October.

The moderately Islamist Ennahda party, which was in power after the revolution and installed Marzouki as president, came second in the general election and has not ruled out joining in a governing coalition.

The presidential vote -- the first time Tunisians have freely elected their head of state since independence in 1956 -- was seen as a milestone for the country that sparked the Arab Spring with the 2011 ouster of longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The revolution that began in Tunisia spread to many parts of the Arab world, with mass protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

In every country except Tunisia the revolution was followed by violent turmoil or, as in Syria's case, a devastating civil war.

Obama hailed the election as "a vital step toward the completion of Tunisia's momentous transition to democracy".

President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
of La Belle France, Tunisia's former colonial ruler, praised Tunisians for their "determination, sense of responsibility and spirit of compromise."

The next government will face major challenges. Tunisia's economy is struggling to recover from the upheaval of the revolution and there are fears that widespread joblessness will cause social unrest. A nascent jihadist threat has also emerged, with bad boy groups long suppressed under Ben Ali carrying out attacks including the killings of two anti-Islamist politicians.

Tunisian newspapers also underlined the difficulties ahead, with daily La Presse saying the new leader must deal with "a massive debt, weak growth, high unemployment, deteriorating competitiveness and highly threatened security".

Le Temps hailed Tunisia for emerging "victorious from a grueling and painful ordeal", adding that voters had not given Essebsi a "blank check" to do as he pleases.
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Africa North
Tunisia's Essebi claims victory
2014-12-22
[IN.REUTERS] Tunisian presidential candidate Beji Caid Essebsi claimed victory in Sunday's run-off election, which is seen as the final step to full democracy nearly four years after an uprising ousted autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

Preliminary results were still to be released by election authorities, but soon after polls closed, Essebsi said he had beaten rival Moncef Marzouki, the incumbent president.

"I dedicate my victory to the deaders of Tunisia. I thank Marzouki, and now we should work together without excluding anyone," Essebsi, a former parliament speaker under Ben Ali, told local television.

His campaign manager said "initial indications" showed the 88-year-old Essebsi had won without giving any details, as hundreds of celebrating supporters chanted "Beji President" and waved Tunisia's red and white national flag.

However,
the man who has no enemies isn't anybody and has never done anything...
rival campaign manager for Marzouki, Adnen Monsar, dismissed the claims saying it was a very close call. "Nothing is confirmed so far," he told news hounds.
Link


Africa North
Jihadists Claim Murders In 2013 Of Tunisia Secularists
2014-12-19
[AnNahar] Jihadists who have joined the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group claimed Thursday the 2013 murder of two secular politicians that plunged Tunisia into crisis, warning of more killings just days before a presidential runoff election.

"Yes, tyrants, we're the ones who killed Chokri Belaid and Mohammed Brahmi," Abou Mouqatel, a dual French national wanted for their murders, said in a video released on the Internet.

It was not clear where the video was filmed, but Abou Mouqatel claimed they were in an area under the control of IS, which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq.

"We are going to come back and kill several of you. You will not have a quiet life until Tunisia implements Islamic law," added the Lion of Islam, whose real name is Boubakr al-Hakim.

Abou Mouqatel appeared along with three other Lion of Islams, all of them dressed in combat uniform and carrying arms, with black jihadist banners waving behind them.

"Our message to the tyrants of Tunisia and to their soldiers is this -- between us there will (only) be weapons."

Interior ministry front man Mohammed Ali Aroui responded by saying "Tunisians are stronger than these terrorists. They mean nothing to us."

Abou Mouqatel, born in Gay Paree in 1983, is considered to be one of the key people organizing the flow of foreign jihadists to Iraq, where he himself has traveled to fight.

He was tossed in the slammer
Please don't kill me!
in La Belle France for seven years in 2008, but given early release in 2011.

The authorities in Tunis estimate that as many as 3,000 Tunisians have gone to Iraq and Syria to fight with jihadist groups including IS, and have expressed concern
...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended...
that some will return to carry out attacks at home.

Belaid, a fierce critic of the moderate Islamist party Ennahda then in power, was murdered in February 2013, and Brahimi, another opponent of the Islamists, in July of the same year.

The attacks, which had not been previously claimed, were blamed by the authorities on the jihadist Ansar al-Sharia
...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet...
group.

The killing of Belaid triggered deadly protests and a political crisis that brought down Islamist prime minister Hamadi Jebali.

Brahmi's murder intensified the crisis, and threatened to derail Tunisia's post-Arab Spring transition until a compromise government was formed in January this year.

On Sunday, Tunisians vote in the second round of a presidential election, capping off four years of a sometimes chaotic transition since the 2011 of longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Incumbent Moncef Marzouki faces political veteran Beji Caid Essebsi in the vote -- the first time Tunisians will be allowed to freely elect their president since independence from La Belle France in 1956.

The first round, on November 23, saw Essebsi, an 88-year-old who heads the anti-Islamist Nidaa Tounes party, take 39 percent of the vote.

In the video posted Thursday, jihadist Abou Mossaab called on Tunisians to boycott the polls, saying the authorities "are turning you into infidels with these elections".

The government, which has been on alert since October, will be deploying tens of thousands of troops and police to guarantee security during the vote.

Shafik Sarsar, head of Tunisia's electoral commission, recognized Thursday that there were "possible and probable dangers," but added that this "should not change the atmosphere of the elections."

In addition to the jihadist threat, major challenges remain for Tunisia.

The North African nation's economy is struggling to recover from the upheaval of the revolution and there are fears that widespread joblessness will cause social unrest.
Link


Africa North
Tunisia presidential vote heads into close run-off
2014-11-25
An official under former hardline ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali appears set for a close run-off in Tunisian presidential polls with a rival who says he represents the 2011 "Arab Spring" uprising that toppled him. Preliminary results in the country's first presidential ballot since the uprising are expected later on Monday. But the parties of two frontrunners said initial tallies showed they would face off in next month's second round.

The presidential poll is a step in Tunisia's sometimes rocky transition since its uprising prompted the overthrow of long-ruling leaders in Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Syria. Tunisia's progress and political compromise between rival Islamist and secular rivals contrasts with warring factions in Libya and the army overthrow of an elected Islamist president in Egypt.

One frontrunner, Beji Caid Essebsi, who was parliament chief under Ben Ali, has cast himself as a veteran technocrat. He will face off with Moncef Marzouki, the current president who has warned against return of "one-party era" figures like Essebsi.

The run-off will likely be tough with both candidates hunting for backing from the liberal, left-wing and Islamist parties that emerged after the end of Ben Ali's one-party rule in one of the Arab world's most secular nations.

Essebsi and other former Ben Ali officials say they are not tainted by the abuses of the past administration. He says he will be looking to consolidate his secular Nidaa Tounes party's win in last month's parliament elections when they beat Islamist Ennahda party into second place. Ennahda won the first election after the 2011 revolt.

"This confirms our win in the parliamentary vote, and that gives us more confidence about the second round," Lazhar Akremi, a Nidaa leader. "It's too early to say who will side with us, but we are reaching out to all Tunisians."

Marzouki, a former rights activist, has called the election a race to stop the return of the old regime. On Sunday after the poll he challenged Essebsi to a televised debate as part of his campaign to "beat the old regime machine".

Votes of Ennahda supporters will play a key role in the second round as the Islamist party positions itself for a part in the new government formation or as the main opposition. It has so far backed no presidential candidate.
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