The Independent Higher Authority for the Elections (ISIE) insists on December 17 as the date for the organisation of municipal elections, ISIE member in charge of communication Adel Brinsi told TAP Friday.
That position was k*taken by the members of the ISIE Council held Thursday night.
ISIE President Chafik Sarsar will meet in the next few days with the President of the Republic, the HPR Speaker and the PM, before the official announcement of the elections’ date.
“Therfore, the ISIE has made its choice, the ball is now in the court of the other stakeholders and the election commission assumes no responsibility in case of delay,” he stated.
Brinsi explained that this date has been chosen on the basis of the outcome of the consultation meeting held with political parties and national organisations on March 14. During that meeting, most of the participants had opted for December 2017, he added.
The failure to hold the municipal elections before the end of 2017 will negatively impact on the electoral process, ISIE members estimated.
They stressed the need to first promulgate the Local Government Code proposed in 2015 and set up the Administrative Court’s regional divisions, whose creation had been planned since 1997.
A set of conditions were put by the ISIE to be able to organise the municipal elections before the end of the year. The government has pledged to meet these conditions.
These conditions include, in particular, dissolving special delegations before the end of March 2017, providing the authority with the final electoral mapping of municipal constitutencies, finalising the budget allocated to the elections, promulgating the decree on the delimitation of the expenditure ceiling for the election campaigns, completing checking data bases, ensuring the neutrality of local officials, setting up chambers of first instance and of appeal at the Administrative Court, providing the necessary logistical and material resources for the organisation of elections and hiring new judges.
During last week’s consultation meeting, several political parties called for postponing the municipal elections to March 2018, while others insisted on the urgency to hold them before the end of 2017.
Source: TAP News Agency