With presidential and parliamentary elections coming up at the end of 2019, it is crucial that the various Tunisian actors involved in the electoral processes are informed about their roles and responsibilities in order to play a full role in ensuring transparent and fair elections.
This includes awareness of processes related to electoral disputes foreseen in the 2014 election law. Relevant actors involved in electoral disputes include judges, lawyers, candidates running for office, political parties and CSOs, who play a major role in monitoring the different types of disputes to contribute to ensuring transparency and fairness of the process.
Significant numbers of the electoral disputes filed during previous elections in 2014 and even in 2018 at the occasion of municipal elections were rejected due to formal reasons. This indicates a lack of awareness of the new electoral litigation procedures among some practitioners and candidates, in addition to little knowledge about related case law decisions by Tunisian courts, some of which tend to be results of restrictive interpretations of the legal provisions and are usually not published. The guide takes up the articles of the electoral law related to electoral litigation and illustrates them with relevant judicial decisions issued by Tunisian courts in 2014 and 2018.
It thus aims to provide legal practitioners, political candidates and civil society members with information on the practical implementation of specific articles of the election law related to electoral disputes (e.g what is meant by notification by any means affording a record in writing, what is the starting point of periods for pleas, the legal standing to file the suit, the territorial competence of courts, etc.) The guide also seeks to increase comparative knowledge concerning previous decisions of Tunisian courts and to support relevant actors should they have to deal with similar cases in 2019.
Download the guide in Arabic.
The guide was prepared in partnership with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). It has developed within the framework of DRI's project "Support to Constitution Implementation in Tunisia - Phase III", funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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