TUNIS: The head of Tunisia’s anti-Islamist Nidaa Tounes party, Beji Caid Essebsi, was on Tuesday leading the country’s first presidential election since a 2011 revolution that sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.

But with no outright winner from Sunday’s poll, in which Essebsi took a lead of six percentage points over incumbent Moncef Marzouki, a runoff will be held in December.

The 87-year-old Essebsi secured 39.46 per cent and Marzouki 33.43 per cent of votes cast, according to results from an election hailed by European Union observers on Tuesday as “pluralist and transparent”.

Leftwing figurehead Hamma Hammami came third with nearly eight percent, followed by London-based Islamist entrepreneur Hechmi Hamdi as well as wealthy businessman and football club president Slim Riahi who took more than five percent each.

The exact date of the second round of voting will depend on any appeals, the head of the ISIE elections body Chafik Sarsar told reporters.

Sunday’s election was the first time Tunisians had voted freely for their head of state since independence from France in 1956. Turnout was 62.9 per cent.

Before the 2011 revolt the North African nation had known just two presidents — “father of independence” Habib Bourguiba and strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was forced to flee by the Arab Spring unrest.

Marzouki was elected president at the end of 2011 by the National Constituent Assembly under a coalition deal with the then-ruling Islamist Ennahda party, which came second in a parliamentary election last month behind Nidaa Tounes.Annemie Neyts-Uytterbroeck, who headed the EU observer mission in Sunday’s election, praised the vote and described any irregularities as “minor”.

“The exercise of freedom of expression and assembly was guaranteed,” she said.

Runoff campaigning began even before the first round result became official.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2014