Tunis: The announcement of the final official results of Tunisia’s elections could be made after two weeks if a high number of serious appeals are submitted to the administrative court.
“The Independent High Commission for the Elections expects to receive several appeals,” Ridha Torkhani, a commission member, said. “There will be a mixture of serious and not so serious appeals, but we will transfer only the more serious ones to the court,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Appeals against the results will be accepted by the commission two days after they are announced late on Thursday, he said.
Torkhani attributed the two-week period to look into the appeals to the court’s workload.
Tunisians on Sunday cast ballots in the first elections post the January downfall of the former regime to elect a constituent assembly that will draft a new constitution, choose an interim president and a caretaker prime minister and prepare the next national elections.
The 217-member assembly will have one year, unless it agrees to extend its mandate. The Congress for the Republic Party, a winner of more than 25 seats in the elections, has already asked that it be extended to three years.
Around 150 people have held protests near the media centre in Tunis to push for action against Al Nahdha, the Islamist party that has performed better than expected, on the grounds that it flouted campaigning rules.
The Popular Petition, a little-known group formed recently that shot to fame after it secured a place among the top three parties in Tunisia, has also come under criticism and its campaigning methods have been challenged amid calls for the invalidation of its results on the grounds that its leaders had broken the elections laws.
