IRI Announces Expert Delegation to Observe Tunisia’s Parliamentary Elections

Washington, DC – IRI today announced its delegation to observe Tunisia’s October 26, 2014 parliamentary elections will be led by Andrew S. Natsios, former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development and currently executive professor and director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs.

Natsios will be joined on the delegation by Ambassador Mark Green, president of IRI, former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania and former U.S. congressman representing Wisconsin’s 8th District.

These milestone elections will see the country choose a permanent, democratically-elected parliament.  Delegates will travel to Tunisia to monitor voting and ballot counting throughout the country.  Following the voting, IRI will issue a statement on the findings of the delegation. 

Other delegates who will observe the elections are:

• Rep. Tom Petri, member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing Wisconsin’s 6th District;
• Tami Longaberger, chief executive officer of the Longaberger Company, chair of the Arab Women’s Leadership Institute’s Board of Directors and a member of IRI’s Board of Directors;
• Max Boot, the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations;
• Scott Carpenter, deputy director of Google Ideas;
• Bruce Chapman, chairman of the board of the Discovery Institute;
• Barbara Haig, deputy to the president for policy and strategy at theNational Endowment for Democracy;
• Amy Hawthorne, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East; and
• Pierre Prévôt-Leygonie, strategic and campaign communications consultant and former Director of Fundraising and Communications for Mobilisation Directe in France.

Judy Van Rest, IRI executive vice president, and Scott Mastic, director of IRI’s Middle East and North Africa programs will also assist in the mission.

Prior to the elections, delegates will be briefed by political party representatives and Tunisian election officials.  They will also be briefed on the rights and responsibilities of international observers and Tunisian election law.  Delegates will then be deployed throughout the country where they will observe polling stations and identify and evaluate strengths and weaknesses in Tunisia’s election system, including campaign regulations, the balloting process, vote tabulation and reporting. 

In addition to this international delegation, IRI has a team of long-term observers, who have been in Tunisia since the end of August monitoring and reporting on the pre-electoral environment and election preparations.  Their reports are available at Tunisia Elections Dispatch No. 1: Voter Registration , Tunisia Elections Dispatch No. 2: Voter Registration  and Tunisia Elections Dispatch No. 3: Pre-Election Period .

From September 9-12, an IRI-National Democratic Institute pre-election assessment mission reported that Tunisia was on a decidedly democratic path, but cautioned that to maintain public confidence, it must ensure parliamentary and presidential elections are free of undue partisan interference and manipulation.  The full report is available in English , Arabic  and French .

IRI endorses the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observers and Code of Conduct for International Election Observers , and since 1983, through international election observation missions and assessments, has monitored 199 elections in 56 countries.