Tunisia .. Are "marginalized" areas boycott the elections?

Mounira Hajlawi-Sidi Bouzid

Mokmouka cautiously raises a rusty, unusable, rusty bucket filled with drinking water from a concrete tank built by her husband.

The 50-year-old woman shares two unfinished rooms with her three children and her sick and unemployed husband, Izz al-Din, who are suffering from extreme poverty and privatization, exacerbated by the lack of safe water.

The couple come from the village of Tawalbia in the village of Makarem in the central governorate of Sidi Bouzid, where residents complain that they have been deprived of water since 2011.They have resorted to traditional methods of providing it by walking a few kilometers to bring it on the back of donkeys from Ain Wahida.They share their water with their neighbors in the village of Jaraydiya, which shares geography and suffering.

Suffering and despair
Before reaching the two areas, citizens in their traditional cars and vehicles face the risk of drowning in sand dunes every day, and may despair of asking the supervisory authority to pave the road.

Lake Al-Thamad, which had been providing relief to the people of the two regions, has dried up due to the high temperatures. Ezzedine, 55, is forced to work for three days until he raises 20 dinars (about $ 7) for a water tanker from neighboring areas.

The helpless housewife sacrifices the price of two days of food to get a water tank that tells the thirst of his family and some of his animals his only source of livelihood.

The boycott decision
A bitter reality and Deng Aish led residents of both regions to protest and announce the decision to boycott the presidential elections scheduled for September 15 and the legislative elections on October 6.

Ezzedine assures Al Jazeera Net that he will not participate "because the politicians have previously made false promises" and surprised his neighbor, Aziz Hamdi, the existence of areas that still adopt traditional methods unhealthy to provide water.

Hamdi told Al Jazeera Net that the villages are isolated on the slopes of the mountains and that they are using jars to transport their patients and their dead, noting that the parties do not care for them only "when the election dates."

The citizen Hassan Badri did not hide his anger from what he described the dire conditions experienced by the residents of the villages and their injuries to many skin and respiratory diseases due to drinking unhealthy water, stressing the island Net that "if he found a way to migrate to do."

Khalid Badri, a member of the water association in the regions of Tawalbia and Jaraydia, spoke about the reasons for the water interruption eight years ago.

Threat of escalation
Badri explained to Al Jazeera Net that they abided by the conditions of establishing an association representing the people and sincerely their debts, but they did not get water, which led them to decide to boycott the elections, threatening to escalate the closure of polling stations in the absence of their demands.

In turn, Bassam Badri, a civil society activist in Makarem, criticized what he considered as a continuation by the authorities in the policy of procrastination and procrastination, stressing to Al Jazeera Net the determination of the youth of the two villages to grab rights under the slogan "boycott is the solution, government of failure, not presidential elections without settling the situation."

Means of compression
The officials of the governorate of Sidi Bouzid refused to make statements despite repeated and repeated attempts by Al Jazeera Net to give them the right of reply and clarification to the public opinion in the region.

On the other hand, Nabil Jalali, regional coordinator of the Subsidiary Body for Elections in Sidi Bouzid stressed that the law prohibits anyone from closing a polling station as an electoral crime with severe penalties.

He explained to the island Net that it is in the extreme cases to resort to security intervention, considering the boycott decision "a means of pressure to enable the people of their right to drinking water."

It is noteworthy that a number of governorates are experiencing occasional movements and closures of roads in protest against the lack of drinking water.