I forgot to start the unit test suite first.

Lib/decimal.py

@@ -5441,7 +5441,7 @@ def _parse_format_specifier(format_spec):
             format_dict['precision'] = 1
 
     # record whether return type should be str or unicode
-    format_dict['unicode'] = isinstance(format_spec, unicode)
+    format_dict['unicode'] = True
 
     return format_dict
 
@@ -5486,10 +5486,6 @@ def _format_align(body, spec_dict):
         half = len(padding)//2
         result = padding[:half] + sign + body + padding[half:]
 
-    # make sure that result is unicode if necessary
-    if spec_dict['unicode']:
-        result = unicode(result)
-
     return result
 
 ##### Useful Constants (internal use only) ################################