Tunisia – Tunis NGO raises questions about voter registration in advance of crucial constitution referendum

Location: Tunis, Tunisia

Language: Arabic

Duration: 00:03:25

Voice: Natural

Source: A24 Tunisia

Restriction: A24 subscribers

Date: 22/7/2022

Storyline:

An elections-focused Tunis NGO is raising questions about President Kais Saied’s government’s management of the national voter registration process before Monday’s constitutional referendum.

In a press conference Thursday, The Chaheed Observatory for monitoring elections and supporting democratic transition said it found irregularities in voter registration lists.

The independent monitors said they found double registrations and deceased persons remaining on voter rolls. 

The group’s head, Alaa Ben Nejmeh, said it witnessed

procedural breaches during the electoral authority’s registration process.

Ben Nejmeh called on the government to work more closely with civil society organizations to ensure election integrity.

Shot list:

Soundbite (Alaa Ben Nejmeh – Head of the Chahid Observatory):

“We participated in this referendum with 48 observers in 24 Tunisian governorates, and these people visited the permanent and mobile registration centers, visited the administrations and observed situations there. we concluded that we went back on the previous electoral dates and voter registration was manual in more than 85%, and this means that the staff working on registration does not have a database, and it has not been confirmed whether the voter is the same person, whether his age is elective, whether he is alive or not, and whether his address is correct or not. As for the automatic registration, it raises our concerns. Through it, the deceased can be registered, and individuals can be registered at other than their addresses, and a person can be registered twice. Frankly, we fear this issue, and therefore one of our most important recommendations to the Elections Commission was to maintain the administrative registration record, as well as we demand more clarifications, more transparency, and empower civil society and observers with information, so that we can understand what is happening, this is a matter of concerns for our country.

Soundbite (Nasser Al-Harabi – CEO of Chahid Observatory):

“The election body always confirms that it is fully prepared, but in the registration process and as we have noticed in the automated registration process, in particular, more than two million and 200 thousand Tunisians have been included, and we do not know how this was done, where they were included, and what system they relied on, and whether The IFAX system (the registration system for vaccination against Covid) was based on. We had previously warned that Ifax may be infiltrated and this matter concerns personal data. Also, is the commission able to complete July 25 according to minimum standards, at least. we did not ask for international or constitutional standards, this referendum as a whole is outside the constitutional foundations and outside international standards, but this body is obligated to accomplish this path, and we have also noticed stumbling and breaches in the framework of the electoral campaign and the slogans raised.”