But the head of the Center’s Tunisia office, Sabina Vigani, criticized the system of voluntary voter enrollment for the Oct. 23 vote, saying “the objective of the campaign isn’t clear.

“One has to choose either the active or the passive path,” Vigani said, but stressed that “The 16 members of the ISIE are totally involved on the ground.” The Carter Center is a nongovernmental organization founded by former US president and Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter to advance human rights. It monitors elections worldwide, including several in Africa.

Vigani said the Center had deployed five teams of observers since July and added that there would be 50 monitors from the organization deployed across the country on election day. The European Union plans to dispatch 150 observers.

Ben Ali’s ouster in January sparked the so-called Arab Spring and Tunisia is the first of the countries where popular revolts took place to go to the polls. The north African country will elect a 218-member constituent assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution ahead of parliamentary and presidential polls.

Meanwhile, a Tunisian university dean says a group of people armed with swords and knives entered his school and threatened staff after they refused to enroll students wearing Islamic veils.

Moncef Ben Abdeljelil of Sousse University’s school of humanities said on Jawhara FM radio that four people entered the school Thursday, threatening to cut his throat.