Staff members of the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) count the votes of the parliamentary elections in Tunis, Tunisia, in the midnight of Oct. 6, 2019. (Xinhua/Adele Ezzine)
Tunisia's Islamist party "Ennahdha" (Renaissance) ranks the first in Tunisian parliamentary elections by winning 52 seats.
TUNIS, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tunisia's Islamist party "Ennahdha" (Renaissance) ranked the first in Tunisian parliamentary elections by winning 52 seats, the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) said on Wednesday evening.
The Heart of Tunisia party came the second with 38 seats out of 217 seats in the Assembly of People's Representatives (parliament), despite its leader Nabil Karoui was in prison for suspicion of money laundering and tax evasion.
"Out of a total of over 7 million registered voters, more than 3 million voted in the elections," the ISIE President Nabil Baffoun said.
The Tunisian electoral authority registered 49,704 rejected ballots and 26,403 blank ballots.
The announcement of the preliminary results coincided with the release of Karoui, almost an hour earlier, after more than a month of detention for suspicion of money laundering and tax fraud. ■
