Tunisia sets June poll date after Constitution deal

AFP

TUNIS Tunisia will go to the polls in June next year, the Islamic-led Government said on Sunday, after striking a deal on a new Constitution for the North African State which was the cradle of the Arab spring.

The announcement of the June 23 date for both the presidential and parliamentary elections came after National Assembly Speaker Mustapha Ben Jaafar Constitutent of the AFP in an interview that important proposal of the Islamic Ennahda party to prohibit of blasphemy in the new Constitution would be put down.

The proposal stoked fears of a creeping Islamization in Tunisia, which by political tensions and a wave of violent attacks in recent weeks which has been moans the radical Salafists have accused.

Ennahda and its coalition partners — centre-left parties, the Congress of the Republic (CPR) of President Moncef Marzouki and Ettakatol — also agreed that a second round in the presidential elections will take place on 7 July
A statement said the parties agreed "on a mixed political system in which the President will be chosen through general elections for a better balance of power, including the core of the Executive." Disagreement about the content of the Constitution and the political system in Tunisia, which led the spring Arab until then the ousted veteran strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali at the beginning of last year.

Ennahda, an Islamic party that touts itself as moderate, won Tunisia's first post-uprising poll in October, with 41 percent of the seats in the National Constituent Assembly.

It said that Islamic law would not be enrolled in the new Constitution and eyed a parliamentary system, while the other parties insisted that the major powers should be held by a president by universal suffrage.

But polls can only be held after the new Constitution is drafted by the mid-term meeting of Parliament.

Assembly Speaker Jaafar told AFP this week that a first draft of the text will be submitted to Parliament in November, is expected to discuss each article over a period of several months before a vote takes place.

The ruling coalition also agreed overnight on the setting up of an independent Electoral Commission, according to sources, by Kamel Jendoubi, architect of Tunisia's first free polls in October last year.