Various dates have been mooted for the next Tunisian elections – the earliest in June and the latest in December. But so far nobody can agree on which would be most appropriate.

“All of the dates announced by the troika recently were unrealistic,” Kamal Jendoubi, head of Tunisia’s Independent Board of Elections, or ISIE, said. Jendoubi felt the dates were unrealistic because the country still lacked a genuine Constitution or electoral legislation.

Various dates have been mooted for the next Tunisian elections – the earliest in June and the latest in December. But so far nobody can agree on which would be most appropriate.

“All of the dates announced by the troika recently were unrealistic,” Kamal Jendoubi, head of Tunisia’s Independent Board of Elections, or ISIE, said. Jendoubi felt the dates were unrealistic because the country still lacked a genuine Constitution or electoral legislation.

Lillia Rubai of ATIDE, the Tunisian Society for Democratic Integrity, said various conditions still needed to be fulfilled before elections could be held in Tunisia – things such as freedom of the press, an independent judiciary and an impartial administration.  Rubai was also worried that, “some state institutions might employ state security in favor of one political party over another, both before and after the elections”.

The Republican Party’s Najib Chebbi said that elections could not possibly be held before March 2014.  That is despite the fact that members of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly, or NCA, had previously agreed that elections must be held by the end of 2013.

“There is no genuine desire to hold the elections any time soon,” opposition politician Samir Beltayeb said. “And the ruling parties will not set a definite date for the elections unless they are certain they will win.”

The ruling parties had hardly eliminated violence, Beltayeb said – and in fact, many ordinary Tunisians felt intimidated about expressing political opinions because certain groups were engaging in violent behaviors on behalf of the ruling Ennahda party and its allies.

Meanwhile Sahbi Atiq, the head of the Ennahda’s parliamentary faction, says elections cannot be organized with the way the security situation is now. And that is despite the fact that Tunisian Prime Minister, Ali Larayedh, has said that he feels elections are tenable in the near future – but only after certain frameworks have been established, such as the drafting of the Tunisian Constitution and the formation of an independent electoral commission. But those were all technical problems that the current government had nothing to do with, Larayedh insisted.

Despite all of the uncertainty though, one thing is clear: many of the politicians currently running the country have already declared their intentions to run for office again in any upcoming elections and election campaigning has already started – regardless of the fact that election dates have yet to be set.