Tunisians react to the overwhelmingly boycotted election

Tunisia plunged into political uncertainty as its main opposition alliance called on President Kais Saied to "leave immediately", a day after voters overwhelmingly snubbed elections for a neutered parliament.

That comes with Saied's government negotiating a nearly $2-billion package to bail out the North African country's crippled public finances.

Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, president of the National Salvation Front alliance, said Saied had "lost all legal legitimacy".

The electoral board said 8.8 percent of the nine-million-strong electorate had turned out for polls, the culmination of a power grab by Saied in the only democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring.

An abstention rate of more than 91 percent "shows that very, very few Tunisians support Kais Saied's approach", Chebbi said by telephone.

He said the result showed "great popular disavowal" of the process that began when Saied, elected in 2019, seized executive powers last year.

The president in July 2021 sacked the government, froze parliament and surrounded it with military vehicles, following months of political deadlock and economic crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Saied, a former law professor, followed up by seizing control of the judiciary and pushing through a constitution that consolidated his near-absolute power in a widely boycotted referendum in July.

His moves, a decade after the ouster of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, have sparked fears of a return to autocracy.