Presidential polls will be held in Tunisia on September 15, the North African country's electoral body has said, rejecting calls to postpone the vote after the death of ailing leader Beji Caid Essebsi.
"The office of the Independent Higher Authority for Elections has set the date of September 15 for the presidential elections," the body's head Nabil Baffoun told the press late Tuesday after consultations with political parties.
Originally scheduled for November, the vote was brought forward following Essebsi's death on July 25.
Potential nominees must submit their candidacy between August 2 and August 9.
Tunisia's liberal prime minister, Youssef Chahed, will run for president in the election, his Tahaya Tounes party said on Wednesday, making him one of the likely frontrunners to succeed Essebsi.
Essebsi, 92, a secularist who helped guide the transition to democracy after a 2011 revolution, was buried at a state funeral on Saturday. The speaker of parliament has been sworn in as interim president to lead the country to a new election.
Slim Azzabi, secretary-general of the Tahya Tounes party, said it would nominate Chahed as its presidential candidate.
The party, which split off from Essebsi's party this year, is now the biggest liberal group in Tunisia's parliament. It governs in coalition with the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party and a smaller liberal group.
Ennahda has not yet named its candidate for the presidency.
Other candidates who have announced their intention to stand include liberal former Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa, and Moncef Marzouki, who served as interim president for three years after autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled, until Essebsi was chosen in the first democratic presidential election in 2014.
Tunisia was the birthplace of the "Arab Spring" protests that swept the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, and the only country where those revolts were followed by a peaceful transition to democracy. Nevertheless, it remains mired in a severe economic crisis that has fuelled social discontent.
The campaigns are scheduled to run from September 2 to September 13, with the results announced two days after the polls.
A date for the second round of presidential elections has not yet been decided, but Baffoun said it would be held no later than November 3.
The announcement came just hours after the body met with representatives of political parties and civil society, some of whom demanded it postpone the first round of elections to run with parliamentary polls set for October 6.
Tunisia's president mainly has authority over foreign and defense policy, governing alongside a prime minister chosen by parliament who has authority over domestic affairs.
