Tunisia’s moderate Islamist party Ennhada on Monday, October 24, claimed winning the country’s first elections since the overthrow of president Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali.
“The first confirmed results show that Ennahda has obtained first place,” campaign manager Abdelhamid Jlazzi said outside party headquarters in the center of the Tunisian capital, Reuters reported.
As he spoke, a crowd of more than 300 in the street shouted “Allahu Akbar!” or “God is great.”
Other people started singing the Tunisian national anthem.
Final results are not yet released and are expected on Tuesday.
But Ennahda officials say party workers had tallied the results posted at polling stations after Sunday’s vote.
“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.”
Tunisians lined up in long queues on Sunday to elect a new assembly, their first elections since Ben Ali’s ouster earlier this year.
Turnout was more than 90 percent — a mark of Tunisians’ determination to exercise their new democratic rights after decades of repression.
The new 217-seat assembly will sit for one year, re-write the constitution, choose a new interim government and set dates for parliamentary and presidential elections.
An Ennahda victory would be the first Islamist success in the Arab world since Hamas won a 2006 Palestinian vote.
Islamists won a 1991 election in Algeria, Tunisia’s neighbor, but the army annulled the result, provoking years of conflict.
Coalition
Ennahda officials said they were prepared to form an alliance with secularist parties.
“We will spare no effort to create a stable political alliance,” Jlazzi told Reuters.
“We reassure the investors and international economic partners.”
Ali Larayd, a member of the party’s executive committee, said it was ready to form an alliance with the Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol, both secularist groups respected by Tunisia’s intelligentsia.
The Congress is led by Moncef Marzouki, a doctor and human rights activist who spent years in exile in France.
Ettakatol is a socialist party led by Mustafa Ben Jaafar, another doctor and veteran Ben Ali opponent.
Ennahda’s preferred coalition partners may reassure some opponents.
Ennahda is led by Rachid Ghannouchi, forced into exile in Britain for 22 years because of harassment by Ben Ali’s police.
A softly spoken scholar, he dresses in suits and open-necked 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 the millions of Western tourists who holiday on its beaches.
He models his approach on the moderate party of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
Source: OnIslam & News Agencies
Comments