Tunisia Constitution to be Put to Vote Saturday

Tunisian lawmakers will vote Saturday on adopting a long-delayed new constitution, more than three years after the revolution, constituent assembly officials said.

"The vote will be held tomorrow, Saturday," Mofdi Mssedi, spokesman for the speaker's office, told Agence France Presse on Friday, a day after parliament completed its review of each article in the draft charter.

The time of the vote has yet to be determined.

"If the constitution is adopted on the first reading by a two-thirds majority, the signing ceremony will take place on Monday," said Karima Souid, an MP and information officer at the assembly.

The text must be approved by at least 145 of the 217 members of the assembly to be adopted, and would then be formally promulgated by the president, prime minister and parliamentary speaker.

If it fails to achieve the necessary majority on either its first or second reading, the charter must be put to a referendum.

The political parties have sought to avoid that outcome, to be able to hold legislative and presidential elections in 2014 and end the political crisis plaguing Tunisia since the assassination of two opposition MPs last year by suspected jihadist.

The national assembly was elected in October 2011, nine months after the popular uprising that toppled strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and touched off the Arab Spring.

But its mission to adopt a new constitution within one year was repeatedly disrupted by bitter political divisions between the ruling Islamist party Ennahda and the secular opposition, together with persistent social unrest and a wave of jihadist violence.

A new government of independents headed by premier designate Mehdi Jomaa should be appointed by Saturday, after Ennahda agreed, under an accord to end months of political deadlock, to hand power to a technocrat administration tasked with leading the country to fresh elections.