TUNIS: Four years after its revolution sparked the Arab Spring, Tunisia’s presidential campaign neared its climax Friday with incumbent Moncef Marzouki facing 88-year-old favorite Beji Caid Essebsi in a runoff.

Ahead of the final day of campaigning for Sunday’s landmark second-round vote, militants brandished a videotaped threat against the North African country’s political establishment.

Essebsi and Marzouki were to hold last rallies later Friday on the capital’s Avenue Bourguiba, a focal point of the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Capping off four years of a sometimes chaotic transition, the vote will be the first time Tunisians freely elect their president since independence from France in 1956.

Amid tight security and the closure of main border posts with strife-torn neighbor Libya, almost 5.3 million Tunisians are being called to the ballot boxes. Tunisians abroad started voting on Friday.

The first round, on Nov. 23, saw Essebsi, who heads the anti-conservative Nidaa Tounes party, take 39 percent of the vote.

Marzouki, a 69-year-old former rights activist installed by Parliament two months after December 2011 polls, took 33 percent.

Nidaa Tounes won parliamentary elections in October and Essebsi has emerged as the clear favorite to be Tunisia’s next president.

His party has said it is waiting until after the presidential vote to start the process of forming a government. The campaign has been marked by mudslinging, with Essebsi even refusing to take part in a debate with Marzouki.”