Tunisia professor poised to win presidency

Bloomberg

Law professor Kais Saied is poised for a landslide victory in Tunisia’s presidential election, a result that would give the political outsider a strong mandate to pursue the constitutional changes he says are needed to complete the nation’s 2011 revolution.
An exit poll by Sigma Conseil pointed to Saied winning 76.9% of ballots in the run-off vote and his competitor, media mogul Nabil Karoui, 23.1%. The election commission was due to announce the official results on Monday, although interim President Mohamed Ennaceur and PM Youssef Chahed have already congratulated Saied.
“Tunisians have opened a new chapter in their history,” Saied, 61, told supporters at his headquarters in downtown Tunis as he hailed the poll’s findings. “I will be a president for all Tunisians and apply the law to everyone, including myself.”
Hundreds of Tunisians took to the capital’s main boulevard after he spoke, many waving the national flag and chanting songs from the days of the revolution that ousted long-time leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
The showdown between Karoui and Saied — both outsiders who beat more than 20 contenders including premier Chahed to reach the run-off — was a stark sign of the widespread discontent with mainstream politics in Tunisia, eight years after its Arab Spring revolt. Sigma correctly called the main results of the first round as well as the legislative elections.
Constitutional law expert Saied, whose composed, unemotional speaking style has earned him the nickname ‘Robot Man,’ is promising a wholesale restructuring of Tunisian politics, expanding parliament to deepen the sense of representation at the grassroots.