Saturday, 22 October 2011 20:27
Posted by Asad Naeem
TUNIS: Tunisian voters on Saturday weighed their choices on the eve of the Arab Spring's historic first elections nine months after the surprise toppling of strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali that started it all.
Campaigning ended at midnight for the vote the previously banned Islamist Ennahda party is tipped to win, with the ISIE independent polling commission reminding candidates and journalists that Saturday would be an "election silence day".
Any breach was punishable by law, it warned in a statement.
"I am so happy to be voting tomorrow, to be able for the first time to exercise my choice. I get goose bumps just thinking about it," 37-year-old Neda Kouki, an aesthetician, told AFP on the streets of Tunis.
Mohamed Ben Salah, 30, said voting was a privilege, months after he joined other Tunisians in protests over corruption, poverty and unemployment that forced Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia.
"I am 30 years ...
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TUNIS: Tunisian voters on Saturday weighed their choices on the eve of the Arab Spring's historic first elections nine months after the surprise toppling of strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali that started it all.
Campaigning ended at midnight for the vote the previously banned Islamist Ennahda party is tipped to win, with the ISIE independent polling commission reminding candidates and journalists that Saturday would be an "election silence day".
Any breach was punishable by law, it warned in a statement.
"I am so happy to be voting tomorrow, to be able for the first time to exercise my choice. I get goose bumps just thinking about it," 37-year-old Neda Kouki, an aesthetician, told AFP on the streets of Tunis.
Mohamed Ben Salah, 30, said voting was a privilege, months after he joined other Tunisians in protests over corruption, poverty and unemployment that forced Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia.
"I am 30 years ...
CAIRO: Thinking of running for office in Egypt? Not if you once belonged to ousted president Hosni Mubarak's party, say activists who have launched a campaign to out ex-regime members involved in corruption.
The new initiative called "Emsek Feloul" (Catch a remnant) hopes to keep the country's November parliamentary elections -- the first since a popular uprising ended Mubarak's 30-year-rule in February -- corruption free.
As Egyptians prepare to navigate a complex new set of rules governing ...
WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday urged Libyan's interim leaders to provide "a transparent account" of the death of strongman Moamer Qadhafi.
The National Transitional Council "has already been working to determine the precise cause and circumstances of Qadhafi's death and we obviously urge them to do so in an open and transparent manner as we move forward," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.
"We also continue to urge them, as we have been over the ...
NEW DELHI: France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Friday that Libyan ex-dictator Moamer Kadhafi had been offered "good conditions" to surrender but had refused.
"It was up to the Libyan people to arrest him and to take him in front of the justice. Things have developed in another way," he told reporters in New Delhi during a trip to the Indian capital.
"He (Kadhafi) behaved in a very aggressive way. He was offered good conditions for his ...
BRUSSELS: NATO was due to wind down its mission in Libya on Friday after a six-month campaign that saw the United States hand over the helm to Europe for the first time in the history of the alliance.
"A great success, a triumph to the political courage of (British Prime Minister David) Cameron and (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy," Nick Witney, the first head of the European Defence Agency and currently an analyst at the European Council ...
SIRTE: Moamer Qadhafi was killed Thursday in a final assault on his hometown Sirte by fighters of the new regime, who said they had cornered the ousted despot in a sewage pipe waving a golden gun.
The demise of the hated dictator, who ruled his oil-rich North African nation with an iron rod for close on 42 years, sparked a spontaneous outpouring of joy and celebratory gunfire in streets across Libya.
"We announce to the world that ...
NAIROBI: The African Union said on Thursday it had lifted its suspension of Libya's membership.
The AU said in a statement it had decided to "authorise the current authorities in Libya to occupy the seat of Libya in the AU and its organs".
The AU meeting was held before news that Muammar Gaddafi had been killed and his last bastion, the city of Sirte, had fallen to National Transitional Council fighters.
The AU said it would set up ...
