WEB DESK
Tunisians began voting today in a referendum on a new constitution that critics of President Kais Saied fear will maul the democracy that emerged from a 2011 revolution by handing him nearly total power. The vote is being held on the First Anniversary of Saied’s ousting of an elected Parliament when he established emergency rule and began governing by fiat. But, it is not clear when the results will be announced after polls close at 2100 GMT.
Under Saied’s own rules for the referendum, no minimum level of participation is needed to approve the new constitution. They only stipulate it will come into effect once the final results are published and do not say, what happens if voters reject it. However, while nearly all major political parties and civil society organizations have denounced his unilateral approach to rewriting the constitution and the legitimacy of the referendum, they have failed to build a united front.