Beji Caid Essebsi

Tunisia's new leader Beji Caid Essebsi said the country has turned the page on dictatorship after a presidential vote that European observers hailed on Tuesday as "credible and transparent".
      
Essebsi, an 88-year-old veteran of previous Tunisian regimes, was on Monday declared the winner of a vote seen as a landmark for the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
      

Anti-Islamist politician Beji Caid Essebsi won Tunisia's presidential election with 55.68 percent of the vote, beating incumbent Moncef Marzouki, the electoral commission said on Dec. 12.
      
Essebsi, an 88-year-old veteran of previous governments, becomes the first president freely elected by Tunisians since independence from France in 1956.
      

Tunisians went to the polls on Nov. 23 to vote for their first directly elected president, in the final step to be taken to full democracy after the 2011 revolution that ended the rule of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

Tunisians are voting Sunday in their first presidential election since the 2011 revolution that sparked the "Arab Spring."

More than 5.2 million eligible voters may cast ballots at some 4500 polling stations which will be open from 8 am to 6 pm local time, according to reports of Al Jazeera.

Tunisia's main secular opposition party is claiming a big victory in the country's historic election over the once dominant Islamists.