Elections 2014 8

Tunisia in German Media

Parliamentary elections, presidential elections, the forming of a new government – Tunisia’s young democracy has covered many milestones within the last months. What picture of Tunisia has been conveyed in German media during this important period in history? The following is an overview of how German journalists portray the political situation in Tunisia at the moment and which aspects catch their interest.

A nuisance to democracy: electoral rumors  

This Sunday I endorsed the role of area observers’ supervisor, in charge of eleven voting centers and about as many national observers for the second round of the Tunisian presidential elections. The elections went great, a few minor incidents here and there, nothing to discredit the electoral process. Just like French radio journalist Anthony Bellanger said on RFI this Monday – the Tunisian elections couldn’t be more boring to comment, just like Swiss elections. However throughout the day I kept receiving phone calls warning me about vote buying, influence on electors and so on and so forth.

Tunisia’s Presidential Elections 2014: campaign posters, public communication and political marketing

In this last phase of electoral campaigning, our presidential candidates have flooded television and radio stations to present their political programs. While some have limited public communication to a discourse concerning the constitionally-imposed attributes of a president, others appeal to undecided voters with a discourse devoted to populist issues, and still others have made far-fetched promises that are well beyond their capacity to keep.

A predictive model for the outcome of the 2014 Tunisian presidential Elections

The model has three major steps to get the final forecast. First, we try to aggregate all available surveys and opinion polls, which will be weighted according to the credibility of the survey. Then we distribute the undecided votes among the various presidential candidates. There have been 45 presidential polls since elections in October 2011 with the majority of studies conducted by 3C surveys Sigma Council Emhord Consulting and the International Republican Institute. The evaluation criteria surveys are: (1) the sample size or number of respondents, (2) the date of the survey, and (3) the reliability of the organization or institution that led the survey.

Report: In Sidi Bouzid, abstention is the voice of the Voiceless

In Bouzaiéne, one week after the legislative elections, residents are in mourning. Grieving their revolt, they speak only of disappointment. Here, nothing has changed, neither the high rate of unemployment, nor the shortage of water, nor the loss of dignity. For the residents of Bouzaiéne, the democratic transition has not reached Sidi Bouzid. Slogans like «anti-power» and «anti-system» freshly spray-painted onto walls throughout the city liberate the suppressed voices of the Voiceless.

Strategic vote, non-vote, and the relative victor–Nidaa Tounes

Secularists defeated Islamists is the verdict most commonly reported in international news outlets; Victory and defeat are relative, Tunisian journalists estimate. The politicization of the secularist-Islamist conflict throughout the Ben Ali’s tenure and the increased occurrences of religious violence after the revolution reflect a true conflict that is by no means the defining feature of the country’s democratic transition nor the 2014 elections. The ISIE’s final tally last week represents «a surprising defeat for the Islamist Nahda party» only for those who do not read beyond the titles of foreign news reports that refrain from examining the intricacies of and history behind party politics over the past four years.

Walkabout Tunis – Election day

Critical observation has been of the utmost importance in this first test of democratic elections, and national and foreign observers as well as journalists and media professionals have undertaken this task, watching, documenting, and reporting on the events of the day throughout the country. The next step will be to assemble all of these notes and testimonies and results to discern whether the inconsistencies and irregularities are a few, apparently isolated or arbitrary occurrences or if they are prevalent enough to indicate otherwise.