Ennahda candidate becomes first female mayor of Tunis

By Saif al-Din bin Mahjoub

TUNIS (AA) - Souad Ben Abdel-Rahim, the candidate for Tunisia's Ennahda movement, won the presidency of the Tunis municipality on Tuesday.

The Ennahda candidate beat her rival, Kamalaldin Eidir, the nominee of the Nidaa Tounes party.

Abdel-Rahim clinched 26 votes -- against 22 for Eidir -- in a second round of voting by the city’s municipal council, becoming the Tunisian capital’s first-ever female mayor.

In May 6 local polls, independent candidates won 2,373 seats on municipal councils countrywide.

Ennahda came in second with 2,139 seats, followed by the liberal Nidaa Tounes party (1,600 seats) and the leftist Popular Front party (261 seats), according to official results.

According to Tunisia’s official electoral commission, the polls saw a voter turnout rate of 35.6 percent.

The local polls were the first to be held in Tunisia since a popular uprising in 2011 led to the ouster of autocratic President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali after more than two decades in power.