Tunisian government confirms July 24 as date of post-revolution election

Tunisia's transitional government said Tuesday elections for a national constituent assembly would go ahead on July 24 despite calls from the election commission for a delay until October 2011.

“The council of ministers discussed at length the proposal of the independent committee for the elections, and it decided to respect the date fixed by the government of July 24,” said government spokesman Tayeb Baccouche.


“We are committed to offering the commission all the means it needs to organize these elections,” he said adding “the commission proposed the delay without conferring with the government first.”

The Constituent Assembly vote will be the first poll in the North African country since the fall in January of the regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was president for 23 years. The new assembly will be tasked with drawing up a new constitution and preparing for elections to replace the transitional government.

The announcement, by a government spokesman, comes two days after the president of the country’s independent election committee proposed moving the poll to October 16.

“For technical and logistical reasons, we don't have enough time to hold an election on July 24,” the president of the commission Kamel Jendoubi said Sunday. “There are seven million voters to register; there are problems of organization, the training of electoral agents (...).

Talk of a delay immediately roused hostility from the opposition, who accused the interim authorities of seeking to gain time at the risk of national instability.

On Monday, the secretary general of the opposition Progressist Democratic Party (PDP), Maya Jribi, said this election was “awaited by all citizens”, and noted that economic and security problems needed to be tackled.

A view shared by the Islamist movement Ennahda (Renaissance), which experts believe might achieve the highest score in free and fair polls.

“The prolongation of the transitional period will have impacts in the economic, social and security domains,” Ennahda spokesman Ali Laraydh told AFP Monday. “Some want a delay to play for time for purely political reasons.”

(Sara Ghasemilee, an editor at Al Arabiya