Presidential elections were held in Tunisia on 23 November 2014, a month after parliamentary elections. They were the first free and fair presidential elections since the country gained independence in 1956, and the first direct presidential elections after the Tunisian Revolution of 2011 and the adoption of a new Constitution in January 2014.
As no candidate won a majority in the first round, a second round between incumbent Moncef Marzouki and Nidaa Tounes candidate Beji Caid Essebsi took place on 21 December. Official results released on 22 December showed that Essebsi won the elections with 55.68% of the vote.
Background
Protests in Tunisia began in December 2010 with riots in Sidi Bouzid after Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in protest against the confiscation of his fruit and vegetable cart. The riots then spread across the country and continued into 2011. Days after a curfew was imposed in the capital Tunis amid continuing conflagrations, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali left the country. Ben Ali's Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi briefly took over as acting president before he handed power over to parliamentary speaker Fouad Mebazaa after the head of Tunisia's Constitutional Court, Fethi Abdennadher, declared that Ghannouchi did not have the right to take power and Mebazaa would have 60 days to organise a new general election. For his part, Mebazaa said it was in the country's best interest to form a national unity government.
Ben Ali's Constitutional Democratic Rally considered changing its name (retaining the "Constitution" part in some form) and running in the general election on an anti-Islamist platform. However, the party was banned on 6 February 2011 and dissolved on 9 March 2011.
Upon being elected in 2011, the Troika coalition made a "moral pledge" to cede power within a year. However, Ennahdha and its allies, the Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol, were still in power and the Constituent Assembly had not finalized a new constitution. This led to the opposition accusing the government of overstaying their implicit term and also of using intimidation to try to silence dissent. The opposition also accused the government of using the Constituent Assembly to push through legislation that would enable them to stay in power. Former speaker of the Assembly, Ettakatol's Mustapha Ben Jaafar, then supported the opposition's call for a non-partisan government after he dissolved the assembly in August. Ennahda, on the other hand, feared that some parts of the opposition were trying to keep it from regaining power and had been emboldened by the August 2013 Egyptian raids. At the same time, a Gallup poll suggested that Tunisians were losing faith in their government.
The head of the Higher Political Reform Commission, Yadh Ben Achour, warned that Tunisia risked anarchy if the transitional period was not handled with care, as institutions and mechanisms of the state were either in disarray or still tainted by links to Ben Ali's regime. Ben Achour also stated that the commission was unsure whether it would be better to reform the constitution or elect a constitutional assembly to write a completely new one, but that it had to be decided soon, as the public was growing tired of waiting. He also confirmed elections would not be held by 15 March 2011 as theoretically stipulated by the constitution, pointing to force majeure as legitimate grounds for taking longer until the election. The election was delayed further by the annulment of 36 candidates who were elected to Tunisia's Board of Elections. The election board was created by giving the candidates' lists to the Constituent Assembly, thus bypassing the judiciary, which cannot review plenary sessions of the Constituent Assembly. The electoral law, which did not include a ban on former regime officials running from office, was approved on 1 May 2014. The filing period for presidential candidates lasted from 8 September until 22 September.
Dates
The interim government announced on 25 February 2011 that the election would be held by mid-July "at the latest". The constitution of Tunisia mandates an election to occur within 45 to 60 days of the Constitutional Council's declaration of the presidency being vacant, but there were calls by the opposition to delay the elections and hold them only within six or seven months, with international supervision. The elections were then delayed until late 2013. On 15 March 2013, the constituent assembly voted 81–21 to hold elections between 15 October 2013 and 15 December 2013.