Crackdown in pre-Election Tunisia.

Some more articles on Tunisia's upcoming elections and the crackdown on the opposition and the press. The LA Times lists some of these egregious breaches of individual and group liberties on the eve of the presidential and legislative elections. For instance, leftist candidate of the Ettajdid Movement, and probably most serious rival of Ben Ali, Ahmed Ibrahim saw his manifesto seized by the  Tunisian authorities. The Independent's Adrian Hamilton has a similar piece on the stifling of the freedom of expression and ability of the opposition to contest freely and fairly. Hamilton provides a scathing portrait of "a soft dictatorship" in which "political control is more discrete and more legalistic."