« Tunisians residing abroad (TRE) have suffered a double penalty: first of all, the number of their representatives’ seats decreased from 18 to 10. Second of all, the requirement for obtaining 400 sponsors is absurd and unfair » says one candidate who did not make into the upcoming legislative elections. Indeed, the country’s new electoral law has clearly diminished TRE’s chances of benefiting from representation in parliament.
Several months before the referendum, Kais Saied has issued a decree-law to change the composition of the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) council. Members of the authority responsible for supervising elections will now be appointed by presidential decree. The timing of this amendment has prompted divergent opinions. Is the ISIE’s independence no more?
On February 18, the High Independent Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAICA) appealed to the Anti-Corruption Authority (INLUCC) regarding illicit broadcasting by three television and radio stations. The outlets in question, which air their programs without a HAICA-issued license to operate, are Nessma TV, Zitouna TV and radio station Quran Karim.
Voter registration for municipal elections closed on 10 August 2017, and Tunisia’s Independent Elections Authority, the ISIE, announced its decision not to extend the process, in spite of relatively low turnout. On August 11, the ISIE released the results of the two-month registration period: 535,784 new voters and 92,201 updated registrations for a total of 5,373,845 voters who will participate in local elections on December 17.
Given mainstream Western media’s portfolio of news reports on Tunisia since 2011 and also in light of the country’s constitutional guarantee for a pluralistic and fair media, it is regrettable as seems to be the case in the days and weeks that have followed the attack that foreign press should be granted more access to events of public interest in the capital than many local, independent media outlets.
In this extremely polarized electoral context, how did the media frame the public discussion and shaped the public opinion? A very bad role, if one believes the 3rd report of Independent High Authority for Audio-Visual Communication (Haica) on the political pluralism, which points the partiality of the audio-visual coverage of the presidential campaigns. Furthermore, the press took a dangerous turn when being engulfed in shifting sands of propaganda and voluntary complicity. But these repetitions seem to worry neither the politicians, nor the journalists.
Critical observation has been of the utmost importance in this first test of democratic elections, and national and foreign observers as well as journalists and media professionals have undertaken this task, watching, documenting, and reporting on the events of the day throughout the country. The next step will be to assemble all of these notes and testimonies and results to discern whether the inconsistencies and irregularities are a few, apparently isolated or arbitrary occurrences or if they are prevalent enough to indicate otherwise.
Ennahdha’s lack of transparency around its agreement with Burson-Mersteller gives rise to inevitable suspicion that the transaction, contrary to encouraging «free and fair elections in Tunisia» might in fact undermine them. Ambiguity around the financial aspect of the deal (“Fees and expenses to be determined at a later date,” reads the official registration document) is a particular concern after political parties’ financial mismanagement in past elections.
The adoption of a charter signifying convergence on the ‘rules of the game,’ is precisely the sort of written agreement recommended by the International Crisis Group for continued, limited consensus that distinguishes healthy political party competition from enmity spurred by the prioritization of personal/partisan gain and power.
The interim government’s approach to addressing terrorism is a continual source of public discontentment, and heightened security issues have directly influenced citizenry’s reticence to participate in political processes, according to several La Presse and Nawaat reports. On the same day that the Ministry of National Defense reported on the Jebel Ouergha explosion, the High Independent Authority for Elections (ISIE) announced the markedly low turnout for voter registration.
As much as instruments to monitor and ensure transparency and the constitutional operation of state powers and processes, the HAICA and the ISIE are, just several months into their roles, equally accountable for their own transparency and constitutional operation. The next six months will not only measure their competency and capacity to fulfill this dual responsability but will more generally decide the nature and successfulness of elections and the direction of the country through and beyond the transition period.
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