After two decades in power, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was re-elected with a staggering 89.62 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s elections, reports France 24. The results from all the North African country’s 26 constituencies showed Ben Ali’s score ranging from 84.16 to 93.88 per cent. Overseas, voters gave him 94.85 per cent of the vote. His rivals trailed far behind with Mohamed Bouchiha and Ahmed Inoubli, earning between 5 and 3.8 per cent respectively. Ahmed Brahim who came in last in the vote, expressed his surprise that Ben Ali’s score, as “habitually astronomical” as it has been in the past, did not reach over 90 per cent. Ben Ali, 73, ousted Tunisia’s elected president since independence from France, Habib Bourguiba, for senility in 1987. At every election since then, his opponents have cried foul over the staggering scale of Ben Ali’s electoral victories.
