Tunisians vote on constitution set to bolster one-man rule
Tunisians voted Monday on a constitution seen as a referendum on President Kais Saied, whose charter would give his office nearly unchecked powers in a break with the country's post-2011 democratic trend.
Voting runs from 6:00 at some 11,000 polling stations across the North African country.
Around 9.3 million out of Tunisia's 12 million people -- civilians aged over 18 -- have opted in or been automatically registered to vote, according to the ISIE electoral commission.
They include about 356,000 registered overseas, for whom polling began on Saturday.
The referendum comes a year to the day after Saied sacked the government and froze parliament in a dramatic power grab, as Tunisia grappled with surging coronavirus cases on top of political and economic crises.
Many Tunisians welcomed his moves against political parties and the often-deadlocked parliament, part of a system long praised as the only democracy to have emerged from the 2011 Arab uprisings.
But after a year of one-man rule in which he has vastly extended his powers and made little progress on tackling deep economic woes, Saied's personal popularity will be under the spotlight.
Opposition parties and civil society groups have called for a boycott, while the powerful UGTT trades union has not taken an official stand on the vote.
