Tunisia's Jomaa forms new cabinet as MPs vote on charter

Lawmakers have voted on a new constitution, three years after Tunisia's revolution, as premier-designate Mehdi Jomaa presented his proposed government of independents after initially failing to achieve consensus.
"I have submitted to the president the list of members of the proposed government to be subjected to a confidence vote in the National Constituent Assembly," Jomaa announced yesterday.
The vote is expected within three days.
Jomaa said his cabinet was formed based on three criteria, "competence, independence and integrity," and called it "an extraordinary team which is aware of the challenges" and whose "mission is not easy".
He said elections were the interim administration's top priority.

Under the roadmap agreed by Tunisia's divided factions, the lineup consists of non-political figures who will be responsible for leading the country to fresh presidential and parliamentary elections this year.

But Jomaa has chosen to retain Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou, despite the demands of his critics that he step down alongside his Islamist party Ennahda, which has the largest bloc in parliament.
The formation of a technocrat administration to lead Tunisia to fresh parliamentary and presidential elections is the cornerstone of an accord reached last year to end a major political crisis triggered by the assassinations of two prominent opposition politicians.

Separately, the constituent assembly convened yesterday evening to vote on the new charter, whose approval would mark another crucial step to getting the democratic transition back on track in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
Earlier, MPs amended three articles in the draft text, before ratifying changes to the rules of the assembly's confidence vote, to facilitate the appointment of the caretaker cabinet which must win parliamentary backing.
After a break, the session resumed at around 0230 IST with the reading of the constitution's 149 articles, which will then be followed by the vote.
The charter is expected to obtain the support of two-thirds of the 217 assembly members that it needs to be adopted, but if it fails to do so it must be put to a referendum.

Deep divisions among Tunisia's political factions had held up the drafting of the new constitution, and eventually forced the ruling Islamists to agree to step down after the constitution is adopted, under the blueprint for ending the political impasse.
On Thursday, lawmakers finally agreed on a new charter, after vetting the document line-by-line over three weeks of painstaking negotiations and heated debate on issues such as women's rights and the role of Islam.
The resulting fundamental law, in the works for two years, is a compromise between the ruling Islamists and the liberal opposition.