Tunisians voted on Sunday to elect 217 new members of the House of People’s Representatives (HPR).
More than 15,000 candidates from different parties, party coalition or independent candidates competed for the 217 seats in the HPR.
Up to 1,507 electoral lists are running in all 33 districts, including 27 are in the country and six are abroad.
Of the 1,507 confirmed lists, 687 are party lists, 722 are independent and 163 are coalition.
The winning party will have the final say in forming the new government and formulating the country’s policies for the next five years.
The constitution assigned most of its powers to the parliament and its government, not to the president.
According to the Tunisian constitution, the party that secures more than 109 out of 217 seats in the parliament has the right to appoint a prime minister and form a government.
If the biggest party fails to win a large number of seats, it may struggle to build a coalition reaching the 109 MPs needed to secure majority support for a new government.
The winning party has two months from the election to form a government before the president can ask another party to begin negotiations to form a government. If this theory fails, the election will be held again.
TunisianMonitorOnline
