it's fascinating to see which blatantly fraudulent elections prompt large outcries and which ones don't.
on the other hand, ben ali got only 89.62% of the vote. in the world of sham elections, that's a pretty poor showing. any self respecting dictator should be able to at least break into the 90s.
i don't know if anyone has noticed the trend in tunis, but ben ali has been slipping in the last few fake elections. the tunisian president serves a five year term. he got 99.4% in 1999, the first time that tunisia held an alleged "multi-party election". that percentage fell to 94.5% in the 2004. ben ali is losing about 1% per year/5% per election. if this keeps up, we only have to wait forty years before someone else has a chance of winning!
