Voters head to the polls in the second round of Tunisia’s parliamentary elections

Tunisia’s president and his shaky decade-long experiment with democracy will face a major test on Sunday as voters cast their ballots in the second round of parliamentary elections.

Turnout was just 11 percent in the first round of voting last month, as many disgruntled Tunisians stayed away and boycotted the influential Islamist opposition party.

The second round of Sunday’s elections is being followed across the Arab world. They are seen as a decisive step in President Kais Saied’s drive to consolidate power, tame Islamist rivals and win back the lenders and investors needed to save the floundering economy.

Voters are electing lawmakers to replace the last parliament, led by the Islamist Ennahdha party, which suspended Saied in 2021 and later dissolved it.

He then had the constitution rewritten to give more power to the president and less to the legislature.

Analysts note a growing crisis of confidence between citizens and the political class since the 2011 Tunisian revolution unleashed Arab Spring uprisings across the region and led Tunisians to create a new democratic political system that was once seen as a model.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. local time on Sunday, except in troubled regions near the Algerian and Libyan borders, where authorities are restricting voting hours for security reasons.

The voter turnout, an important sign of the legitimacy of the election, is expected to be announced on Sunday evening, and the election results in the following days.

In the first round of the election, 23 candidates won seats in the 161-seat parliament, either because they were unopposed or because they won more than 50 percent of the vote.

In the second round on Sunday, voters choose from 262 candidates who want to occupy 131 seats.