Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has won landslide approval for constitutional changes that would allow him to remain in power, according to the first official results of a weekend referendum, issued early Monday.
A massive 99,52% of the electorate voted “yes” in Sunday’s referendum, according to the results, which were released shortly after 4:00 am (0300 GMT) by the interior ministry. The figures covered all the country’s 25 constituencies plus ballots from voters living abroad.
Turnout was 96,15% in Tunisia and 87,55% among Tunisians abroad, a global total of 95,59%.
The ministry was to announce the definitive results later Monday. The referendum — the first poll of its kind in the north African country of more than 10-million people — proposed amending about 50% of the constitution, including the elimination of restrictions to the number of presidential terms, currently set at three.
The new constitution, approved by parliament in April, also raises the age limit for presidential candidates from 70 to 75.
Ben Ali, now 65, therefore now has two more chances to stand for office after his third term expires in 2004. Another amendment gives the president immunity for life from prosecution “for all acts committed” during his term in office.
The new text also provides for a two-round presidential election, the creation of a bicameral parliament, with a Chamber of Advisors being set up alongside the Chamber of Deputies and an extension of the powers of the Constitutional Council. Voters either deposited a white “yes” ballot paper or a black “no” paper in boxes at the polling stations.
In the campaign leading up to the referendum, the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) hammered home its “vote yes” message to some 3,6-million Tunisians eligible to cast their ballot in the plebiscite.
The proposed changes met only token opposition in the country, whose regime has long been accused by international human rights organisations of suppressing political and press freedoms.
Tunisia’s parliament, seen as a rubber-stamp body in which the RCD holds 148 of the 182 seats, overwhelmingly approved the bill to change the 1959 constitution on April 2.
Ben Ali first came to power in 1987, when he ended the senile Habib Bourguiba’s 30-year grip on power in a bloodless coup.
Bourguiba, who died aged 96 in 2000, acquired the title “president for life” under a constitutional amendment in 1975, a measure Ben Ali had removed from the books. A variety of associations and organizations endorsed the constitutional amendments, with some calling for a new life presidency to allow Ben Ali to continue guiding the country’s transition to full democracy.
The European Parliament — the elected assembly of the 15-nation European Union — sent an observer team to monitor Sunday’s vote, as did Senegal and Egypt. – AFP