Gahler: Tunisia ready for transparent democracy

Michael Gahler, Chairman of the European Union mission to monitor elections in Tunisia said that Tunisia is ready for democracy. Gahler told Arabstoday, in the conjunction of a conference held in Tunisia, that “he is comfortable in regards to the transparency of democracy in future Tunisia,” pointing out that the upcoming elections on October 23rd well “go extremely well” especially that no conflicts were reported during the meetings held between observing teams of the elections with the parties taking part in the elections, which only showed a united want for democracy. The EU official said that “The abuses that have been monitored are simple and do not represent a threat to the electoral process, which included a lack of respect for the places allocated to display the candidate lists, as well as the presence of some citizens who tore down lists that were put up.” However, he said that Tunisia is not facing anything serious in comparison to other countries that he had visited. Gahler stressed that the only reason why coordinating the elections started off slowly was because of the lack of trained employees and the lack of interested citizens in elections, as citizens are hesitant in voting for a nominee because of the abundance in parties nominating themselves and their unclear views on several current issues facing Tunisia. On the other hand, Gahler said that Tunisia is going through a sensitive stage that should be carefully prepared for, and called on citizens to take part in voting in the elections in order to make the democratic transfer of power a successful one. Gahler announced that six teams, each one made up of two people, were appointed to observe and follow up the elections of Tunisians abroad, starting from October 20th, stating that the EU mission has decided and for the first time to widen and spread its work outside of Tunisia to ensure that Tunisians abroad take part in the elections. He explained that those teams will be split into three teams in France, one team in Germany, one team in Italy, and another in Belgium. The mission will last for three days and will include counting votes in order to announce the results of the votes on the same day as Tunisia.