Kairouan,Tunisia, May 3 (EFE), (Camera: Natalia Román Morte).- A European Union electoral delegation is set to use discretion and careful analysis in a bid to understand the reality on the ground as it acts as observers to Tunisia’s upcoming municipal elections.
It will be an exceptional mission because the EU normally does not observe local elections.
The election's importance, however, lies in the fact that the vote will mark the end of the only transition process to survive among the countries that underwent a so-called Arab Spring, mission head Fabio Massimo Castaldo told EFE.
The Italian Alberto Simonitto and the Lithuanian Vesna Dolinsek are also part of the group of eight experts who landed in Tunisia on April 6, just a week before the election campaign began.
They have been destined to Kairouan, regarded by Tunisians as the fourth most sacred city in Islam, and also to Sidi Bouzid, which was at the heart of the protests that unleashed the Arab spring that ended the dictatorship of long-time Tunisian president Zinedine El Abidine Ben Ali.
There are a total of 36 municipalities and close to 200 electoral lists, dominated by conservatives like that of the Ennahdha Islamist party.
The main issues facing the nation are youth unemployment and a lack of state infrastructure.
Social disenchantment, widespread throughout the country, makes abstention the main threat to these elections in which more than five million Tunisians are being called to the polls for the first such vote since the uprising.
It is also a situation that favors independent candidates, the majority linked to trade union movements and civil society.
“We’re trying to follow it as discretely as possible, so the candidates feel free to say what they want. Our role is to observe, not to judge or intervene, and understand the reality we’re in,” Simonitto told EFE.
“We rely on neutrality so we try to find the maximum plurality of actors in the democratic process: political parties, candidates, regional institutions, judges, police, NGOs, and we always everyone ask the same questions, based on the principle of confidentiality,” he added.
Highly experienced _ he started observing electoral processes in Kosovo in 2001 _, the political science graduate acknowledged that the work is carried out "in a Tunisian way," meaning with a certain level of improvisation as "sometimes meetings are extended, others are canceled last-minute."
Despite this being his ninth mission, it's the first time Simonitto covers local elections: "Something new for me, I'd never seen candidates' door-to-door campaigning."
Echoing his words was Dolinsek, who started working with NGOs on observer missions in 2014 and has already worked in Tunisia, where she watched over the legislative and presidential elections.
"It's difficult to compare because they are different electoral processes but there have been changes, like the inclusion of women and participation by young people and disabled people. It show
