The upcoming general elections in Tunisia will no doubt prove once again the impossibility of the electorate saying no, writes Aysha Ramadan from Tunis The polls in Tunisia will open on 24 October for presidential and parliamentary elections, the 11th such elections since the country's independence from France in 1956. That Tunisian President Zein Al-Abidine Bin Ali will be awarded a fourth term has been a virtually certainty since the 2002 referendum on amending the constitution. It is also expected that the candidates of his Democratic Constitutional Rally Party will win a parliamentary majority. But then, as is the case throughout much of the Arab world, the results of such elections tend to be a foregone conclusion. The only unknown variant is the eventual distribution of the 20 per cent of parliamentary seats guaranteed by law to be allocated to the officially-sanctioned opposition parties. Given such a predictable outcome, it is little wonder that Tunisians are so indifferent to the polls. Rising costs of living, expenses at the beginning of the school year and the approaching month of Ramadan are what most concern Tunisians at the moment. Tunisians have focussed their political feelings to Pan-Arab causes, rather than domestic concerns. The political emotions of ordinary Tunisians are aroused by the daily outrages in Iraq and Palestine. The Tunisian media and communications professor Al-Arabi Showiekha attributes voter apathy to a general mistrust of the polling process. Since the notorious electoral rigging in 1981 which outraged people at home and abroad, Tunisians lost whatever faith they may have once had in the ability of the ballot box to produce radical change. Political forces in Tunisia have varied considerably over the value of participating in the forthcoming elections. A crucial factor in determining their positions was the constitutional amendments of November 2003 allowing the president to seek a fourth term of office, which some opposition parties fear opens the prospect of a president for life. On the basis of their reactions to the constitutional amendments, political forces in Tunisia have essentially ranged themselves in three distinct camps with respect to their attitudes towards the forthcoming elections. One might be termed loyal opposition, or the parties some observers refer to as the official opposition. Wholeheartedly in support of the constitutional amendments they intend to take part in both the presidential and legislative elections. These include the Movement of Socialist Democrats (MSD) and the Unionist Democratic Union (UDU), which declared their support for the nomination of Bin Ali and called upon their constituencies to cast their ballots in his favour. They are also fielding candidates for the legislative elections in most voting districts. Other members of this trend are the Liberal Social Party (LSP), which has nominated its leader, Munir Al-Baji for president, and the Popular Unity Party (PUP), which has nominated Mohamed Bushiha for the presidency. These two parties are also fielding parliamentary candidates in most voting districts. PUP secretary-general has claimed that his party's candidates will be uncontested in many of these districts except by other candidates from the same party, or as Bushiha was quoted in the party mouthpiece Al-Wihda, "we have always said that we are competing with no one in the current electoral battle but ourselves." The second camp of opinion is made up of legally established parties that, in recent years, have been growing increasingly critical of the president and ruling party. One of these, the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), has called for a boycott of the presidential elections, although it will participate in the parliamentary elections. A second, Attajdid (renovation) Movement, an assembly of independent figures and small left-wing parties that has launched a "democratic initiative", will participate in both the presidential and parliamentary elections. Moreover, it will also be fielding a candidate for the presidency: Mohamed Ali Al-Halwani, a university professor and president of the National Council for Renovation. According to Mohamed Al-Kilani, a member of this council, Attajdid Movement's primary aim in participating in these elections is to reach out to the Tunisian people and to present them with an alternative political discourse. In the opinion of this left-wing political activist and former political detainee, the only way to break through the government's and media's long-term siege on the opposition parties is through electoral campaigns. As for the call for a complete boycott of the elections, this has been adopted by the recently authorised Democratic Bloc for Work and Liberties, as wells as by several parties that are not officially recognised, such as the Islamic Resurgence Movement, the Republican Congress Party and the Tunisian Communist Workers Party. As disparate as their ideological orientations are, these parties all share the conviction, as stated by the Republican Congress leader Al-Munsif Al-Marzouqi, that the political situation in Tunisia inhibits even the minimal standards and guarantees necessary for democratic elections. The opinion was seconded by the Tunisian League for Human Rights, which, on 22 September, declared, "the electoral code and the general political climate are not conducive to the organisation of fair and honest elections." The league -- the oldest human rights organisation in the Arab world and Africa -- is determined to monitor the elections in spite of the fact that the government has refused to allow it to participate in the National Electoral Observatory.
