Tunisia -

The Tunisian Electoral Commission has faced a torrent of criticism and accusations of falsifying the participation rates in the referendum on the draft constitution, while the commission affirmed that the results it announced are correct and that its preliminary results are subject to appeal before the judiciary.

Yesterday evening, Tuesday, the commission published on its page the preliminary results of the referendum, before this morning it deleted these results and published other results in their place, including a significant change in the numbers announced for most electoral districts (25 districts out of 33).

A widespread controversy erupted this morning on social networks, after this discrepancy was discovered in the numbers announced by the Election Commission yesterday evening and the numbers it published this morning.

Doubts about the body

He added to the opposition's suspicions of suspicions of fraud in the participation rates in the referendum on the new constitution, which took place the day before yesterday, Monday;

The authority withdrew from its official page the results of the participation published yesterday.

The opposition political activist in the National Salvation Front, Jawhar bin Mubarak, wrote on his Facebook page that the opposition will file a lawsuit against the Elections Authority "after it was proven that it was involved in documents on charges of fraud and the capture and circulation of fraud."

While the controversy over this discrepancy in numbers began to expand rapidly on the communication platforms, opposition parties rushed to hold seminars to expose what they considered suspicions of fraud, while monitoring organizations demanded a recount of the votes.

The Secretary-General of the Republican Party, Issam Chebbi, one of the parties participating in the boycott campaign to drop the referendum, says:

The Election Commission was implicated in falsifying numbers related to participation rates after thousands of votes were cast.

He added to Al Jazeera Net, "It seems that the figures announced by the Elections Authority late on Tuesday evening did not satisfy the President of the Republic, Qais Saeed, who was shocked by the size of the boycott, so amendments were made to inflate the participation rates."

deliberate amplification

Chebbi says that the objective of the electoral commission is to introduce these amendments and to inflate the participation rate;

It is an attempt to legitimize the referendum, considering that it is a non-independent and biased body to President Saeed, who appointed a number of its members.

He believes that the Elections Commission carried out an improvised action, similar to the way in which President Qais Saeed prepared the draft constitution, in reference to the president's acknowledgment of the leakage of errors to the draft constitution in its first version, which was published in the Official Gazette, which included 46 errors.

The Secretary-General of the Republican Party says that this confusion in the work of the commission is due to the President of the Republic, Kais Saied, receiving a "resounding slap" due to the failure of 75% of the electoral body (more than 9 million) to go to the referendum, which made his narrative that he represents the will of the people "falling with water."

Chebbi adds that the suspicions of fraud by the electoral commission appointed by Kais Saied represent the biggest evidence that his project fell electorally, politically and morally, stressing that the opposition will intensify its pressure to close the coup arc.

Chebbi enumerates examples feeding suspicion towards the electoral commission;

Such as not objecting to the amendments made by the President to correct errors in his draft constitution, despite the publication of the first version of the draft constitution in the Official Gazette and after the start of the referendum campaign.

He also says that the Electoral Commission was silent about the president's violation of the electoral silence when he urged Tunisians on polling day to vote for his project, in addition to preventing one of its members from entering the commission's media center "because of suspicions."

Recount

On the other hand, several organizations active in monitoring the integrity of the elections called on the electoral commission to recount the votes again due to what was observed of discrepancies in the numbers regarding the percentage of Tunisians participating in the referendum.

The "Witness to Monitor Elections and Support Democratic Transitions" observatory, the "I Watch", the "Raqaba" observatory, and the "Monitors" monitor demanded a recount of the voter's votes due to the mismatch of the numbers published by the electoral commission on Tuesday and today.

The "I Watch" organization said that the discrepancy in the numbers in this blatant form for the first time in more than 10 years is not a "leakage of errors", given that the mismatch in the numbers was monitored in 25 electoral districts out of 33 at the level of the entire country.

She considered that this inconsistency "reflects a great lack of experience and competence and makes the results of the referendum questionable," calling for the formation of a committee comprising civil society organizations with real independence to carry out the recount of votes and re-announce the results.

The "I Watch" organization also demanded that citizens be given the opportunity to verify whether they voted or not, in order to verify the truth of the referendum results in a way that ensures that the voter's will is not "falsified."

For its part, the Shahid Observatory for Monitoring Elections and Supporting Democratic Transformations demanded the necessity of recounting the votes participating in the referendum following a discrepancy in the electoral commission numbers, under the supervision of the Court of Accounts and the presence of accredited observers.

The head of the observatory, Ola bin Najma, told Al Jazeera Net that the work of the Independent High Authority for Elections "was dominated by improvisation and confusion, which caused damage to the integrity of the electoral process and the lack of respect for international standards."

She emphasized that the electoral commission neglected to implement the law on several occasions, starting with its condoning the breach of electoral silence by Qais Saeed, as well as its lack of readiness to prepare the referendum well due to the limited time that was imposed.


The body disavows

On the other hand, the Electoral Commission confirmed that the process of compiling the results of the 2022 referendum was carried out in accordance with the law, but at the same time it admitted that a material error had been leaked by adding an unspecified list of referendum participants within the annexes of the announced results decision.

The Election Commission confirmed, in a statement today, that the results it announced were "correct and not tainted by any errors, and that it published all the details that were presented in the authority's media center (in the Conference Palace in the capital) immediately after the completion of the announcement of the preliminary results."

The percentage of voters who voted on the draft constitution - on 25 July - 30.5 percent of an electoral body estimated at more than 9 million.

The percentage of voters who voted "yes" was 94.60%, compared to 5.40% who voted "no," according to the Election Commission.

More than two million and 830 thousand voters participated in the voting process on the draft constitution, while more than 6 million and 400 thousand voters boycotted it for various reasons.