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As predicted, the moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, has won more votes than any other political party competing for seats in the Tunisian constituent assembly election. Yet, the 90 seats it now occupies, which account for 41.5 percent of the assembly, still suggest that a majority of Tunisian voters support the separation between mosque and state.
Such strong support for Ennahda can be attributed to its decades of activism against the Ben Ali regime, which banned the party in the late 80s. In this way, a vote for Ennahda was a vote against dictatorship. In the coming months, the hugely popular party will have to prove to voters still highly skeptical of its political program that it will and can turn its rhetoric into reality.
A number of alleged transgressions committed in the lead up to its campaign and during the campaign itself, such as placing stickers showing its logo on the hands of illiterate voters on election day, its use of money to gain votes, and the presence of some candidates among its lists who have questionable backgrounds have all contributed to a severe lack of trust on the part of more secular voters, many whom are women.
Victorious candidates of one political party, the People’s Petition, have already been disqualified in six provinces, in five provinces due to electoral campaigning violations, and in France 1, due to proven links of the head of the list to the former regime.
Ennahda is currently in coalition talks with several liberal parties, including the Congress for the Republic (CPR) led by human rights activist Moncef Marzouki, and Ettakatol (the Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties), that was part of the legal opposition to Ben Ali.
“The only way to move forward,” Marwan Muasher, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, and electoral observer for the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Tunisia, told The Majalla, “is by allowing everyone a seat at the table and then letting people judge whether these parties then have successful programs or not to deal with their everyday problems.”
Ennahda was not the only victor in this election. Tunisian voter, Hamza, thinks that the Tunisian people are the real winners. “I’m just happy with the result, because the majority has spoken. It’s clear. They want Ennahda. So, we wanted democracy and now we have. For this, we should be happy,” he said.
Declared free and fair, the election in Tunisia took place in “a positive atmosphere of national pride,” according to International Republican Institute (IRI) observers, in which turnout exceeded expectations, amounting to around 90 percent of the 4.1 million registered voters. “The challenge now,” Mr. Muasher said, “is to write a constitution that will enshrine the principals of pluralism at all times and of respect for diversity, as well as address the needs of the different political, social and cultural forces in this country.”
“If Tunisia is able to do that, it will have huge and positive repercussions in the Arab world,” he added.
The second election after the birth of the Arab Spring is scheduled to take place in Egypt this November, followed by an election in Libya sometime next year. The leaders of Syria and Yemen are under severe pressure to step down, all the while ordinary citizens protesting against their policies are being imprisoned and killed. We are all wondering who is next.
“I think that the waves of change are going to come to the region and will not spare anyone,” Muasher continued. With a public that “is no longer willing to accept the low level of governance that has existed in the region for a long time,” he said, countries like Iran and Israel will be among the losers for not realizing that the region has changed.
Geopolitically speaking, “Even though this is a process that will be probably measured in decades rather than months and years, we already are seeing changes that will demand a revisiting of policies by different countries, whether in the region or beyond, and that old policies will not be able to address new situations,” the former deputy prime minister of Jordan asserted.
