Independent presidential candidate Kais Saied and leader of the "Heart of Tunisia" party, Nabil Karoui, will advance to the second round of Tunisian presidential election, according to official results released Tuesday, reports Trend referring to Reuters.
Saied, a law professor, led the first round of presidential election by winning 18.4 percent of the votes, followed by Karoui with 15.58 percent, according to the results released by the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE).
"Saied topped the first round of the early presidential election with 620,711 votes," ISIE President Nabil Baffoun told a press conference held at the Media Center in Tunis.
Meanwhile, Karoui, a media mogul who has been detained since August for suspected tax evasion and money laundering, received 525,517 votes, Baffoun said.
Saied and Karoui will face off in the second round of the presidential election.
The Islamist candidate Abdelfattah Mourou, current interim speaker of the parliament, was ranked third with 434,530 votes.
The Tunisian electoral authority registered 68,125 rejected ballots and 24,085 blank ballots