Friday, March 04, 2011

TUNIS: Tunisia’s interim president said Thursday an election would be held on July 24 to appoint a “constituent council” charged with rewriting the Constitution after the ousting of the country’s veteran leader.

In a televised speech, interim President Fouad Mebazza said he and the caretaker government would stay in power until the election is held.
“We declare today the start of a new era … in the framework of a new political system that breaks definitely from the deposed regime,” Mebazaa said.

A source close to the president’s office told Reuters that once elected the constituent council could either appoint a new government or ask the current executive to carry on until presidential or parliamentary elections are held.
Tunisia has struggled to restore stability since mass protests ousted veteran President leader Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14.

In an unrelated development, three Tunisian NGOs called Thursday on Italy and Europe to give better treatment to illegal Tunisian migrants fleeing the upheaval in their country.

“We call on the Italian and European authorities to break with security solutions” applied to illegal immigration from the southern Mediterranean, they told a news conference at which they presented the results of an inquiry carried out in February. The NGOs include the “Euro-Mediterranean human-rights network” and the Tunisian League for Human Rights.
They call on Rome and the EU to take into consideration “the imperatives of good neighborliness and development, in particular in the context of the Arab democratic transition” which “could accelerate the flow [of migrants] in the months to come.”

Some 500 Tunisians made landfall illegally Tuesday evening on the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa, after a week-long pause in the influx of migrants of this type into Italy, where some 6,000 migrants have so far arrived. About 90 percent of these migrants come from Zarzis, Tataouine and Gabes in the south of Tunisia, according to Abdel Jalil Bdoui, a member of the group of NGOs. He said that among them were about 100 women and 10 disabled people. – Reuters, AFP