TUNIS: Tunisia held its first free municipal elections Sunday as voters expressed frustration at the slow pace of change since the 2011 revolution in the cradle of the Arab Spring.
The election has been touted as another milestone on the road to democracy in the North African country, which has been praised for its transition from decades of dictatorship.
But Tunisia has struggled with persistent political, security and economic problems as well as corruption since the revolution, and observers expected a low turnout for Sunday’s poll.
At a polling station in the capital, 58-year-old Ridha Kouki acknowledged that voting is “a right and a duty” but said Tunisians “have little hope” of any change.
Chokri Halaoui, 45, said he wanted to send a “message to politicians to tell them ‘we have voted now show us what you can do’.”
Turnout, two hours after polling began, was at around 4.5 percent, the election commission said.
Tunisians have already voted in parliamentary and presidential elections since the 2011 fall of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, but municipal polls had been delayed four times due to logistic, administrative and political deadlocks.
President Beji Caid Essebsi has called for a “massive turnout.”
“For the first time (since the revolution) the Tunisian people are called to participate in municipal elections, something that seems simple but it is very important,” he said on Friday.
Casting his ballot on Sunday, Essebsi again urged Tunisians to vote, saying “democracy cannot be imposed but must be exercised.”
Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist Ennahdha movement, also urged a large turnout by “young Tunisian voters,” admitting however that politicians “don’t hold all the keys to progress.”
Tunisia is grappling with economic challenges including an inflation rate which stands at around eight percent and an unemployment rate of more than 15 percent.
The country was hit by a wave of protest at the start of the year over a new austerity budget introduced by the government.
“These municipal elections won’t change anything for us. We will always be on the same cart without wheels or a horse,” 34-year-old housewife Hilma said ahead of the vote.
More than 57,000 candidates, half of them women and young people, are running for office in Tunisia’s 350 municipalities.
Around 60,000 police and military personnel have been mobilized for the polls, while Tunisia remains under a state of emergency, imposed in 2015 after a string of deadly militant attacks.
European parliament vice president Fabio Castaldo, head of an EU delegation monitoring the polls, said the election was “an important step for the country’s stability.”
Voting will run until 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT) in more than 11,000 polling stations across the country.
But in Sidi Bouzid, cradle of the 2011 revolution, and the neighboring region of Kasserine in central Tunisia, a hotbed of protests during the revolt, polling stations will open later and close earlier for “security reasons,” organizers said.
In December 2010, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire and later died of his wounds in Sidi Bouzid, in a protest over unemployment and police harassment that sparked the Arab Spring.
The municipal elections, enshrined in the new constitution and one of the demands of the revolution, mark the first tangible step of decentralization since the end of Ben Ali’s rule.
Voters will elect municipal counsellors who in turn will elect mayors by mid-June.
Experts predict Tunisia’s two political heavyweights — Ghannouchi’s Ennahdha movement and the secular Nidaa Tounes party founded by Essebsi — will come out on top in nearly every district.
But there remains some hope that the polls will see a new generation elected into office.
The municipal polls will be followed by legislative and presidential votes in 2019.
Tunisians vote in first free municipal elections
Tunisians vote in first free municipal elections
- These elections have also seen police and members of the army vote for the first time
- Voter turnout appears to have been low
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
