Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi has announced that he will not run for a second term in presidential elections expected this year, despite his party’s calls for the 93-year-old to stand.
Mass protests which toppled ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria have stirred the opposition in Tunisia, and social media campaigns have begun rejecting a second term for Essebsi.
Although, according to the Tunisian constitution adopted by parliament in 2014, he has the right to run for two terms.
Tunisia will hold a parliamentary election on October 6 and a presidential election starting on November 17.
They will be the third set of polls in which Tunisians can vote freely following the 2011 revolution that toppled autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled for 23 years.
In December 2014, Essebsi won the first free presidential election, becoming Tunisia’s first freely and directly elected president.
Essebsi, a former parliamentary speaker under Ben Ali, has been the dominant figure in the North African country since his election in 2014, despite constitutional rules limiting his powers to defense and foreign relations. But he has lost influence since Prime Minister Youssed Chaded took office as prime minister in 2016.