Polls opened at 07.00 am (0600 GMT) Sunday in Tunisia’s first-ever free elections, nine months after the surprise toppling of strongman Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in a popular revolt that sparked the Arab Spring with an Islamic party poised to win. [It is now 1:28 PM in Tunisia -7:28 Central Time]
Some 7.2 million people are eligible to elect a 217-member assembly that will write a new constitution after decades of autocratic government under Ben Ali . This assembly will draft a new constitution to replace the one Ben Ali manipulated to entrench his power. The multi-party body will also appoint an interim government and set elections for a new president and parliament,
The big question of the day is whether or not the Islamic Ennahda party, banned under Ben Ali, will win enough votes to give it a majority in the assembly. Most seem to believe that the islamist party will not win big enough to give it a majority in the assembly and thus it will seek to lead a coalition.
Will the Islamists Gain the Majority of the Vote?
Tunisia’s secular elite fear the rise of Ennahda but the party has made great effort to assuage the concerns of secularists and Western powers, fielding several women candidates including one who does not wear the hijab, or Muslim head scarf, and promising not to undermine women’s freedoms. Tunisia was a pioneer of secular modernization among Arab and Muslim countries in the post-colonial period, banning polygamy, equalizing inheritance rights, giving women the right to vote and discouraging the veil.
But there are the fundamentalist Islamists known as Salafists. They attacked a cinema and a TV station in recent months over artistic material deemed blasphemous. Ennahda says they have nothing to do with them, but liberals do not believe them. I tend to agree with the liberals. If any Salafists gain seats in the assembly, the Ennahda are sure to want to attract them to their coalition, and in doing so, the Salafists will be the perfect foil for a good cop/bad cop game for the Ennahda–much like the Tea Party are used by the Republican Party as an excuse for some of their harsh stances against immigration policies.
Will the Salafists gain enough votes to secure any seats in the assembly?
Second to learning how many from the Ennahda party are elected, I am curious to know how many Salafists will win a seat in the assembly–that seems to be another critical question. If enough Salafists win to give the Ennahda party a coalition majority, then it’s all over for a lot of basic freedoms in Tunisia. You can expect the implementation of a fundamentalist religious state and repression of the media.
Addendum:
In what is widely regarded as the Arab Spring’s first democratic test, Tunisians can choose from more than 11,000 candidates — half of them women –representing 80 political parties and several thousand independents.
I will be curious to see what percentage of the candidates who win are women. Almost any percentage will be better than that of the USA. In the Senate we have 17 women out of 100 members or 17%. In the House we have 17% as well (75 women out of 435 members). Will Tunisia do better than 17%?
