Tunisia opposition accuses Electoral Commission of electoral fraud

The Tunisian opposition has accused the country’s election commission of “electoral fraud” following the major discrepancy between the preliminary results of the referendum announced by the elections authority on Tuesday and the numbers published on the authority’s website yesterday.

The I Watch organisation, which specialises in transparency, issued a statement calling for a recount of the votes by an independent committee “that includes accredited civil society organisations that observed the voting process…. As well as academics specialised in statistics and court judges, accountants who have experience in monitoring electoral processes, in order to verify the results and ensure their transparency and integrity.”

It warned that the inconsistency with the preliminary results makes the process of challenging the referendum results more complicated, and called on the Administrative Court to bear the responsibility and issue its rulings within a reasonable time that takes into account the rights of citizens.

The electoral commission said on Tuesday that the new Tunisian constitution, giving far more power to President Kais Saied, was passed in a referendum which saw a 30.5 per cent turnout, Reuters reported.

The commission said 95 per cent of voters approved the constitution in a ballot which was boycotted by opposition groups who accuse Saied of staging a coup against the democracy that emerged from Tunisia’s Arab Spring uprising of 2011.

READ: Tunisia court: Those who boycotted the referendum have no right to challenge its results