Islamists claim win in Tunisia’s Arab Spring vote

Official results not yet announced; leading secularist party concedes defeat; protesters in capital allege voting irregularities.

By REUTERS
Ennahda party Tunisia 311 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Ennahda party Tunisia 311
(photo credit: REUTERS)
TUNIS  – Moderate Islamists claimed victory on Monday in Tunisia’s first democratic election, sending a message to other states in the region that long-sidelined Islamists are challenging for power after the “Arab Spring.”
Official results have not been announced, but the Ennahda party said its workers had tallied the results posted at polling stations after Sunday’s vote – the first since the uprisings that began in Tunisia and spread through the region.
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“The first confirmed results show Ennahda has obtained first place,” campaign manager Abdelhamid Jlazzi said outside party headquarters in the center of the Tunisian capital.
As he spoke, a crowd of more than 300 in the street shouted “Allahu Akbar!” Other people started singing the Tunisian national anthem.
Mindful that some people in Tunisia and elsewhere see the resurgence of Islamists as a threat to modern, liberal values, the party officials stressed that Ennahda would not try to monopolize power.
“We will spare no effort to create a stable political alliance... We reassure the investors and international economic partners,” Jlazzi said.
Sunday’s vote was for an assembly that will sit for one year to draft a new constitution.
It will also appoint a new interim president and government to run the country until fresh elections late next year, or early in 2013.
The voting system has built-in checks and balances, which make it nearly impossible for any one party to have a majority.
Ennahda will therefore be forced to seek alliances with secularist parties, diluting its influence.
“This is an historic moment,” said Zeinab Omri, a young woman in a hijab, who was outside the Ennahda headquarters when party officials claimed victory.
“No one can doubt this result.
This result shows very clearly that the Tunisian people is a people attached to its Islamic identity,” she said.
Tunisia became the birthplace of the Arab Spring when Mohamed Bouazizi, a vegetable seller in a provincial town, set fire to himself in protest of poverty and government repression.
His suicide provoked a wave of protests, which, weeks later, forced autocratic president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia.
The revolution in Tunisia, a former French colony, in turn inspired uprisings that forced out entrenched leaders in Egypt and Libya, and convulsed Yemen and Syria – reshaping the political landscape of the Middle East.
Ennahda is led by Rachid Ghannouchi, who was forced into exile in Britain for 22 years because of harassment by Ben Ali’s police.
A soft-spoken scholar, he dresses in suits and opennecked shirts, while his wife and daughter wear the hijab.
Ghannouchi is at pains to stress his party will not enforce any code of morality on Tunisian society, or on the millions of Western tourists who holiday on its beaches. He models his approach on the moderate Islamism of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The party’s rise is met with ambivalence by some people in Tunisia. The country’s strong secularist traditions go back to the first post-independence president, Habiba Bourguiba, who called the hijab an “odious rag.”
Outside the offices of the commission that organized the election, about 50 people staged a sit-in demanding an investigation into what they said were irregularities committed by Ennahda.
“I really feel a lot of fear and concern after this result,” said Meriam Othmani, a 28-year-old journalist. “Women’s rights will be eroded,” she said. “And also, you’ll see the return of dictatorship once Ennahda achieves a majority in the constituent assembly.”
The only official results released were from polling stations abroad, because they voted early.
The election commission said that out of 18 seats in the 217- seat assembly allocated to the Tunisian diaspora, nine went to Ennahda.