Tunisian voters on Saturday weighed their choices on the eve of the Arab Spring's historic first elections nine months after the surprise toppling of strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali that started it all. Campaigning ended at midnight for the vote the previously banned Islamist Ennahda party is tipped to win, with the ISIE independent polling commission reminding candidates and journalists that Saturday would be an "election silence day".
Any breach was punishable by law, it warned in a statement. "I am so happy to be voting tomorrow, to be able for the first time to exercise my choice. I get goose bumps just thinking about it," 37-year-old Neda Kouki, an aesthetician, told AFP on the streets of Tunis.
Mohamed Ben Salah, 30, said voting was a privilege, months after he joined other Tunisians in protests over corruption, poverty and unemployment that forced Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia. "I am 30 years old, but I have no work, no wife, no car, no house. I will be voting for freedom and for jobs," he said. Tunisia's 7.2 million eligible voters have been called to elect a 217-member assembly on Sunday that will rewrite the constitution after two decades under Ben Ali.
The assembly will also have the loaded task of appointing an interim president and a caretaker government that will remain in place for the duration of the drafting process, expected to take a year. The ISIE electoral commission said Saturday that everything was in place for the poll. "By the end of today, all polling stations will have these ballots," commission member Mohamed Fadhel Mahfoudh told journalists in Tunis.
Commission president Kamel Jendoubi added: "As far as security is concerned I think things are going the right way. There is a lot of vigilance." Voters will choose from 11,686 candidates on 1,517 lists - 828 for political parties, 655 for independents and 34 for party coalitions.
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