TUNIS (Reuters) – Only 8.8% of Tunisian voters cast ballots in Saturday’s parliamentary elections, authorities announced, after most political parties boycotted the vote as a charade aimed at shoring up presidential power.

The provisional turnout figure is lower than the 9.8% inflation rate – underscoring the economic pressures that have left many Tunisians disillusioned with politics nearly 12 years after a revolution that introduced democracy.

The vote is part of a series of political changes made by President Kais Saied since he shut down the previous, more powerful, parliament in July 2021 and moved to rule by decree, amassing ever more power.

Saied wrote a new constitution this year which diluted the parliament’s powers, making it subordinate to the presidency and with little influence over government or policy.

The president has presented his political changes as necessary to save Tunisia from years of political paralysis and economic stagnation, and on Saturday morning urged voters to take part.

However, few Tunisians that Reuters has spoken to over recent weeks said they were interested in the election, seeing the new parliament as irrelevant and the vote as a distraction from an economic crisis wrecking their lives.

The economy shrank by more than 8% during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recovery has been slow. The government is seeking an IMF bailout that would require unpopular cuts in public spending. Meanwhile the crisis has caused food shortages.

The political parties that dominated the previous parliament, elected in 2019 with a turnout of about 40%, have accused Saied of a coup for his shutdown of parliament last year and say he has instituted one-man rule.

Under Saied’s new electoral law, which he passed by decree, political parties would have had a far smaller role in the election even if they had taken part. Party affiliation was not included on ballot papers next to candidate names.

The electoral commission head, Farouk Bouasker, who announced the turnout figure described it as “modest but not shameful”, ascribing it to the new voting system and a lack of paid election campaigning.

What are the odds that the six “Providence men” arrested last week and charged with stealing more than $31,000 worth of merchandise from the Home Depot in West Roxbury will show up for their next court appearance Jan. 13?

There are three chances: Slim, fat and none.

This case is appalling, but hardly unusual. In fact, it’s become standard operating procedure not just in Massachusetts, which is obviously a lost cause, but in America itself.

No perps get punished anymore, for anything. The get-out-of-jail free card applies to everyone, but especially to illegal aliens — undocumented Democrats.

These six “Providence men” include Abner Perez, Miguel Perez and Johnathon Amperez-Perez — do you begin to detect a pattern? And si, that is his listed surname, Amperez-Perez.

The senors were busted a week ago Friday morning at the Home Depot on the VFW Parkway.

When Boston police arrived, they found that the suspects had stuffed $13,518.79 worth of wire into a boxed-up bathtub for which they were going to pay $339. The previous day, the police reported, they had stolen $17,989 worth of electrical wire from the same store.

They were arrested and brought before West Roxbury District Court Judge Kathleen Coffey, who once tried to restore the state pension that had been revoked from Whitey Bulger’s jailbird convicted felon hack brother Jackie.

The hack judge Coffey reasoned that merely trying to help a serial killer stay on the lam by committing perjury before a federal grand jury did not represent a dereliction by Jackie Bulger of his sworn duties as a high-ranking hack court official in Massachusetts.

But I digress.

The van the Providence men were using had an expired MA registration and the attached license plates had been lifted from another vehicle, according to police.

Inside the van the cops found paperwork from Homeland Security and the Tennessee DMV as well as receipts from at least four other Home Depots in two states.

In court, the prosecutor pointed out to the Bulger judge that three of the newcomers to our land had “pending Worcester cases” as well as ICE detainers — you know, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He asked the judge to revoke their bail.

The judge refused, naturally. The DA then asked for $2,500 cash bail. Hell no. The ones with ICE detainers had their bail set at $1,500. The other three had bail set at $1,000.

Somewhere, Judge Shelley Joseph was nodding her approval of her fellow Democrat jurist’s… compassion.

This all took place in a courtroom with Spanish interpreters for one and all, or should I say, para uno y todos. A “Providence woman” showed up with cash to bail them all out. It is a great country, no? At least if you’re an illegal alien criminal.

Here’s another twist: they were originally charged with aggravated organized retail crime over $10,000, a no-brainer considering the cops recovered more than $31,000 worth of stolen electrical wire from the low-rider van.

Yet mysteriously the charges were reduced to the lesser count of “larceny over $1000.”

Oh, I forgot, Judge Coffey did issue one stern warning to los muchachos. They are all to stay out of Home Depots. Using the same logic she employed when slobbering over the Bulgers, I guess it will be okay for them to shift their operations over to… Lowe’s.

This is how it goes everywhere. No one does anything about this crime wave. And it’s only going to get worse next week when Title 42 expires and hundreds of thousands of more of these Third World career criminals swarm across what remains of the border.

When the Jamaicans robbed the bank on Martha’s Vineyard last month, nobody dared mention what was known immediately — that the gun-wielding thugs had island accents. The cops didn’t want to be accused of… profiling, I suppose.

Here’s another recent pinch. Last Saturday night, in Saugus, the cops pulled over an erratic driver who claimed to be Sugentino Patricio Percel Uben, of, where else, Lynn.

According to the police report, inside the vehicle the cops recovered more than 15 grams of crack cocaine and 24 grams of fentanyl or heroin. On his person, they found $8,461 in cash, including $2,440 in his Nikes. They also found foreign currency — pesos and one birr, which is apparently Ethiopian.

Guess what happened when the cops fingerprinted him — he’d been arrested under at least three other aliases.

As the arresting officer wryly noted, using modern PC lingo, “While identifying as (Carlos Antonio) Rodriguez, Uben was arrested on 07/23/1998 in Corpus Christi Texas for possession with intent to distribute cocaine. He was convicted of same.”

Riddle me this Batman: How is it that a convicted illegal alien drug dealer who’d done serious time in Texas would wind up in… Lynn? Go figure.

But even Americans no longer get much beyond a slap on the wrist except under the most extreme circumstances.

Take Christopher Keeley, the 27-year-old who is charged with slaughtering an elderly Marshfield couple last month. He then fled to Miami Beach, where he dyed his hair a garish reddish-pink to blend into the Collins Avenue demimonde.

You should see how many horrific earlier charges were broomed in Quincy for this Keeley bird, despite his racial handicaps. (He’s white and Irish.) But that’s a topic for another day.

The reality is, this utter breakdown of the criminal justice system is yet another reason why tens of thousands of law-abiding, working-class Americans are fleeing the Commonwealth.

Remember Rachael Rollins? She was elected district attorney of Suffolk County in 2018 on what amounted to a platform of coddling “Providence men” and “Lynn men.” Now, thanks to Brandon, she’s the U.S. attorney here.

But there are glimmers that even Rollins is beginning to recognize the folly of her party’s policies.

In her office’s sentencing memo on drug dealer Yo Pesci (now postponed until February), she noted how the lenient Lynn-man treatment has straightened out Yo Pesci — NOT!

She asked for a 10-year sentence for the obese thug.

“Just punishment must significantly escalate from the relatively light sentences he has received in the past for his troubling crimes. It’s clear that the prior sentences only emboldened the Defendant and his conduct.”

Ya think? Is it possible Rachael Rollins is finally waking up? Nah, probably not.

Will the last American leaving Massachusetts please turn out the lights?

Christopher Willard via Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images

• Kevin O’Leary said he previously made $15 million as a brand ambassador for FTX. 
• The “Shark Tank” host testified to the Senate Banking Committee earlier this week about his involvement with the company.  
• O’Leary is among several celebrity defendants listed in a class-action lawsuit from FTX investors. 

“Shark Tank” host and FTX investor Kevin O’Leary said he is giving Sam Bankman-Fried the benefit of the doubt in the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange. 

Fresh off his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, O’Leary — who received $15 million from FTX as a brand ambassador — appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday, where he was grilled about his role in the company and Bankman-Fried’s alleged fraud. 

“I don’t have the facts,” O’Leary said. “[New FTX CEO] John Ray doesn’t have them yet. He’s going to get them. I’m looking through my records. I’m willing to fund a forensic account of our accounts.”

He continued, appearing to defend Bankman-Fried at various points during discussions with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, Joe Kernen, and Becky Quick.

“This is America. The justice system provides the presumption of innocence unless proven otherwise,” O’Leary said. 

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday, where he is in custody after US federal prosecutors charged the former CEO on eight counts including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.  

Meanwhile, O’Leary is among several celebrity defendants — including NFL star Tom Brady and comedian Larry David — listed in a class-action lawsuit for publicly promoting FTX before its demise.

In the interview, O’Leary defended himself and fellow investors, noting the nature of risk involved in venture capital. 

“Obviously none of us would have wanted to be in this mess if we could’ve avoided it, but we just didn’t know,” he said. “Frankly venture investing is you could do all the due diligence you want, eight out of ten go to zero.”

O’Leary told CNBC he believes creditors who lost money in FTX should be paid back first, while shareholders who assumed the risk should accept the loss. 

“The shareholders, of which I’m included, I don’t think we should get anything back,” he said. “We’re venture investors, we’re big boys, we lost our money, we understand it. I don’t want anything back there until the people who had money in their accounts get theirs back.”

In the same interview, O’Leary also defended himself against comments from Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who called the “Shark Tank” television host a “liar.”

“Yesterday on the air, CZ called me a liar. That suggests I perjured myself in front of the US Senate for two hours this week. I can assure you that’s not the case,” O’Leary said.

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Elon Musk reinstated the Twitter accounts of several journalists that were suspended for a day over a controversy on publishing public data about the billionaire’s plane.

The reinstatements came after the unprecedented suspensions evoked stinging criticism from government officials, advocacy groups and journalism organizations from several parts of the globe on Friday, with some saying the microblogging platform was jeopardizing press freedom.

A Twitter pollthat Musk conducted later also showed that a majority of the respondents wanted the accounts restored immediately.

“The people have spoken. Accounts who doxxed my location will have their suspension lifted now,” Musk said in a tweet on Saturday.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. A Reuters check showed the suspended accounts, which included journalists from the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post, have been reinstated.

The U.N. human rights chief welcomed the reinstatements, but said he continued to have concerns.

“Twitter has a responsibility to respect human rights: @elonmusk should commit to making decision based on publicly-available policies that respect rights, including free speech. Nothing less,” Volker Turk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, wrote.

Donie O’Sullivan, a CNN reporter who had been among the journalists who were suspended and then reinstated, said he still could not tweet because the platform was demanding his removal of one of his posts. He said he would appeal.

Officials from France, Germany, Britain and the European Union had earlier condemned the suspensions.

The episode, which one well-known security researcher labeled the “Thursday Night Massacre”, is being regarded by critics as fresh evidence of Musk, who considers himself a “free speech absolutist,” eliminating speech and users he personally dislikes.

It also occurred amid an exodus of advertisers and as the company has slashed jobs. Sources familiar with the matter said there had been layoffs in Twitter’s engineering departments this weekend. The employees affected worked for the part of the company that kept the social media platform running and were told via email on Friday evening, The Information reported.

Shares in Tesla (TSLA.O), an electric car maker led by Musk, slumped 4.7% on Friday and posted their worst weekly loss since March 2020, with investors increasingly concerned about his being distracted and about the slowing global economy.

Roland Lescure, the French minister of industry, tweeted on Friday that, following Musk’s suspension of journalists, he would suspend his own activity on Twitter.

Melissa Fleming, head of communications for the United Nations, tweeted she was “deeply disturbed” by the suspensions and that “media freedom is not a toy.”

The German Foreign Office warned Twitter that the ministry had a problem with moves that jeopardized press freedom.

The suspensions stemmed from a disagreement over a Twitter account called ElonJet, which tracked Musk’s private plane using publicly available information.

On Wednesday, Twitter suspended the account and others that tracked private jets, despite Musk’s previous tweet saying he would not suspend ElonJet in the name of free speech.

Shortly after, Twitter changed its privacy policy to prohibit the sharing of “live location information.”

Then on Thursday evening, several journalists, including from the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post, were suspended from Twitter with no notice.

In an email to Reuters overnight, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, said the team manually reviewed “any and all accounts” that violated the new privacy policy by posting direct links to the ElonJet account.

“I understand that the focus seems to be mainly on journalist accounts, but we applied the policy equally to journalists and non-journalist accounts today,” Irwin said in the email.

The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing said in a statement on Friday that Twitter’s actions “violate the spirit of the First Amendment and the principle that social media platforms will allow the unfiltered distribution of information that is already in the public square.”

Musk accused the journalists of posting his real-time location, saying it amounted to providing “basically assassination coordinates” for his family.

The billionaire appeared briefly in a Twitter Spaces audio chat hosted by journalists, which quickly turned into a contentious discussion about whether the suspended reporters had actually exposed Musk’s real-time location in violation of the policy.

“If you dox, you get suspended. End of story,” Musk said repeatedly in response to questions. “Dox” is a term for publishing private information about someone, usually with malicious intent.

The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, one of the journalists who had been suspended but was nonetheless able to join the audio chat, pushed back against the notion that he had exposed Musk or his family’s exact location by posting a link to ElonJet.

Soon after, BuzzFeed reporter Katie Notopoulos, who hosted the Spaces chat, tweeted that the audio session was cut off abruptly and the recording was not available.

In a tweet explaining what happened, Musk said “We’re fixing a Legacy bug. Should be working tomorrow.”

Basic services were being restored in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Saturday after the latest wave of Russian air strikes on critical infrastructure, as residents navigated a city gripped by fog and girded for a holiday season marked by uncertainty.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a quarter of Kyiv remained without heating but that the metro system was back in service and all residents had been reconnected to water supply by early morning.

Only around one-third of the city remained without electricity, he said, but emergency outages would still be implemented to save power. “Because the deficit of electricity is significant,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukrainian officials said Russia fired more than 70 missiles on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the Kremlin’s Feb. 24 invasion, forcing emergency blackouts nationwide.

Earlier this month, Klitschko had warned of an “apocalypse” scenario for the capital if Russian air strikes on infrastructure continued, though he also said there was no need yet for people to evacuate.

“We are fighting and doing everything we can to make sure that this does not happen,” he told Reuters on Dec. 7.

In a gloomy winter haze on Saturday, officials reopened a popular pedestrian bridge that had been damaged during an earlier air strike and were setting up a smaller than usual Christmas tree in a central square.

The vast space in front of the centuries-old St. Sophia Cathedral is traditionally anchored by a hulking evergreen at Christmas. But officials this year opted for a 12-metre (40-foot) artificial tree festooned with energy-saving lights powered by a generator.

Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Ukraine’s 43 million people.

Klitschko said the tree was funded by donors and businesses, and that no public celebrations would take place.

“I doubt this will be a true holiday,” said Kyiv resident Iryna Soloychuk, who arrived with her daughter to see the tree just hours after another round of air-raid alerts wailed across the country.

“But we should understand that we’re all together, that we should help one another.”

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