Elections législatives 2014 3

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.

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.