Financing Questions Shadow Tunisian Vote, First of Arab Spring

[alp227]

Source: NY Times

As Tunisians prepare to vote on Sunday in the first election of the Arab Spring, the parties and their supporters have ramped up a bitter debate over allegations about the influence of “dirty money” behind the scenes of the race.

Liberals, facing an expected defeat by the moderate Islamist party Ennahda, charge that it has leapt ahead with financial support from Persian Gulf allies. Some Islamists and residents of the impoverished interior, meanwhile, fault the liberals, saying they relied on money from the former dictator’s business elite. And all sides gawk at the singular spectacle of an expatriate businessman who made a fortune in Libyan oil and returned home after the revolution to spend much of it building a major political party.

In the first national election since the ouster of the strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January, voters will choose an assembly that will govern the country while writing a new constitution. The vote is a bellwether for the Arab world, and the debate over the role of political spending is a case study of the forces at play here and around the region.

But the debate also illustrates the mixture of elation and worry that has accompanied Tunisia’s progress toward democracy: freed from the overt coercion and corruption of Mr. Ben Ali’s government, many now fear that more subtle forces are trying to pull the strings from behind the scenes, in part though political money.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/world/africa/tunisia-election-faces-financing-questions.html?pagewanted=all

[snot]

1. I'd really also like to know how many electronic voting machines are being sold outside the US.

[iandhr]

2. this is our future

Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSEOXRLSpVc

[snot]

3. Heh heh!