Tunisians will vote on Sunday to elect a 217-member parliament that will then form what most observers expect to be a coalition government. They will return to the polls to elect a president on 23 November, completing the terms stipulated under the country's new constitution and beginning the second post-independence Tunisian republic. In passing these two electoral junctures, Tunisia will be the first Arab Spring country to have completed the transitional phase to democracy, some four years after the first sparks that ignited the Arab Spring took place in the town of Sidi Bouzid in southwestern Tunisia on 17 December 2010. Some 1,327 political party, independent and coalition lists will be fielding candidates in the legislative elections, which will be held across 33 voting districts, six of them abroad. Polling in these latter districts will begin on 24 October, two days before the polls open in Tunisia itself. Although the number of competing lists may appear confusingly large, in fact they are fewer than the 1,781 lists that vied in the Constituent Assembly elections in 2011, of which 28 succeeded in entering the Assembly. Observers maintain that the proportional electoral system will prevent any single party from gaining a majority and best guarantee diverse representation in the new parliament. It has not been easy to reach this stage, and Tunisian politicians have engaged in tugs-of-war not just over the country's new constitutional provisions but also over the new electoral law and creation of an independent commission to supervise the elections. Some of the conflicts have entered the precincts of the country's administrative courts, though national dialogue meetings have helped pave the way for the forthcoming elections. Sponsored by the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and three other civil society organisations, these meetings convened intensively between July 2013 and January 2014. They would not have been able to succeed without significant compromises from all sides, which allowed for reconciliation between the major political forces and the moderate Islamists, represented by the Ennahda Party. The Ennahda Party is led by the veteran Islamist politician Rashed Al-Ghannouchi. It has engaged in a long process of dialogue with Tunisia's secularists, primarily led by the Nida' Tunis (Call of Tunisia) Party, a coalition headed by veteran politician Beji Caid Al-Sebsi, some liberal parties, forces affiliated with the government of the ousted former president Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali, and the Popular Front, a leftist coalition formed in 2012 and led by Hamma Hammami. These forces will now be leading the fray in the forthcoming legislative race. According to opinion polls, Ennahda and Nida' Tunis will be the frontrunners, with about 30 per cent of the vote each, while the Popular Front is likely to rank third with around 10 per cent. Three other parties follow: the Republican Party, headed by Najib Al-Chebbi; Congress for the Republic, founded by Moncef Marzouki, who remains its honorary president; and the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties, more familiarly known as Ettakatol and headed by Mostapha Ben Jafar. The latter served as the speaker of the Constituent Assembly that was the Tunisian parliament in the interim phase and was entrusted with drafting the new constitution. Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol combined with Ennahda to form the coalition, or “troika,” government that ruled Tunisia from December 2011 to January 2014. This was then replaced by an independent government of technocrats, headed by Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa, that was charged with holding the legislative and presidential elections and administering national affairs until these elections are completed. Nevertheless, the map of the electoral terrain is complex, and on it there appear parties and personalities hailing from the Ben Ali period. Unlike the elections that created the Constituent Assembly in October 2011, the current legislative elections will not be characterised by a “political isolation” law that bans affiliates of the old regime from running for office. The Ennahda Party was instrumental in defeating a bill that would have sustained the political isolation provisions for the new elections. Party officials have argued that the country has now “overcome the legacy of the past” and that the final say should be left to the voters. However, critics have also charged that Ennahda's backtracking on the law was the result of pacts concluded between the Islamist party and business magnates linked with the Ben Ali regime. The role played by businessmen and the influence of political financing have been major issues as the elections draw near. The names of prominent businessmen from the Ben Ali entrepreneurial class also head quite a few electoral lists. In Sfax, Tunisia's industrial and commercial capital, Nida' Tunis is fielding a list headed by business magnate Moncef Al-Salami in one of the city's two electoral districts. In the same district, the Republican Party's list is headed by businessman Salah Al-Din Al-Zahaf and the Ennahda list is headed by another businessman, Mohammed Farikha. Observers have also noted that prominent businessmen either head or are near the top of the Ennahda Party's electoral lists in many other districts. The same applies to the Nida' Tunis lists, though to a lesser extent. When this is added to the five well-known business magnates who are among the 27 names on the almost finalised candidates list for the forthcoming presidential elections, the growing political profile of big business is apparent, especially when compared to the 2011 elections. An overview of the electoral platforms of the Ennahda and Nidaa' parties, the two frontrunners, reveals the same neoliberal socio-economic outlook, which is termed a commitment to the “social market economy.” This outlook places both parties squarely on the centre right. Their platforms do not call for a major redistribution of wealth, carried out by the introduction of comprehensive tax reforms based on an equitable graduated system, for example. Neither party's platform places it in an adversarial relation to global capitalism, and neither party calls for the non-payment of loans secured by the Ben Ali regime under spurious and inequitable conditions. They appear even less inclined to take stances that local capitalism might regard as unfavourable, to the degree that neither party has come out in support of the UGTT's demands to step up negotiations to increase wages. The two parties' socio-economic outlook is in large measure informed by their eagerness to lure foreign and private investment to the country, to boost the tourism industry, and to double the economic growth rate to six per cent over the next five years. They have simultaneously pledged to reduce unemployment to about 10 per cent, or about half its current level. Also in the economic context, both party platforms envision the realisation of dreams to rehabilitate Tunisia as a centre for economic services linking Africa and Europe. On 13 October, Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa met with the secretary-general of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Mukhisa Kituyi. Jomaa is reported to have said, “Tunisia needs three years of painful economic reforms after the elections. These reforms will necessitate sufficient boldness as they include lifting subsidies and tax reforms. “I expect Tunisian economic growth to reach only three per cent in 2015. The country's budget this year will need an input of $4.4 billion in additional funds, of which $2.7 billion will derive from the international market.” Security and the fight against terrorism has been another subject of major concern in the forthcoming legislative elections. Over the past two years, two Popular Front leaders, Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, were assassinated. The Interior Ministry has announced that more than 50,000 police and security forces, backed by the armed forces, will be deployed on polling day. Jomaa expressed his confidence in his government's ability to ensure the safety of the polls in an interview with Reuters on 11 October. In the same interview, however, he also revealed anxieties about terrorist attempts to infiltrate Tunisia across the Algerian and Libyan borders. “Since the beginning of 2014, Tunisia has apprehended around 1,500 jihadists who are suspected of involvement in terrorist activities,” he said. However, a Minister of Interior spokesman said a few days later that while “there are terrorist elements that were plotting to target the electoral process as well as to sow confusion in the polling activities and to target a political figure using a booby-trapped car, we have succeeded in apprehending them.” Many political party platforms have called for closer regional and international cooperation in the fight against terrorism. There is a general awareness that terrorism is far more than simply a national security concern and that combatting it is intimately connected with economic improvement and generating a favourable investment climate more generally. The Nidaa' Party, in opposition to the Ennahda-led troika government, blamed its rival for what it called the “unprecedented deterioration” in the state of security in Tunisia. When unveiling his party's platform, Beji Caid Al-Sebsi said, “Our country has experienced the phenomenon of terrorism like it has never done before.” The Constituent Assembly elections in 2011 brought a definitive end to the era of one-party rule in Tunisia, an era that had lasted from independence in 1956 to the revolution. In view of the nature of the new electoral system, it is now almost a foregone conclusion that the country will soon be headed by a new coalition government. Al-Ghannouchi says that his party is ready to form a coalition government with its political adversaries, most notably the Nidaa' Party. He also made it clear in recent statements that he is even willing to enter into a coalition with political parties and individuals associated with the Ben Ali era. In an interview on Algerian television on 5 October, Al-Ghannouchi said, “The Ennahda movement will not choose its allies. The ballot box will determine the identity of those allies according to who places third or fourth in the elections. “We prevented the political ban on men from the former regime and we prevented the passage of the political isolation law. All political parties that are operating under the constitution as legal and national parties are possible coalition partners for Ennahda.” The indicators so far are that Ennahda will not be able to obtain the 41 per cent win that it had in the Constituent Assembly elections three years ago. Observers believe that Tunisian voters quickly discovered that Ennahda's promises did not in fact remedy the country's economic and administrative problems, and they may have taken note of the fact that Tunisia under the Ennahda-led troika government became more vulnerable to terrorism than ever before. On the other hand, Ennahda has learned from the mistakes of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and has adopted a more inclusive and consensual discourse and refrained from fielding a presidential candidate. Nevertheless, according to observers, it will be Ennahda's adversaries who will largely set the course for Tunisia's future. Either the elections will return the Islamists to power in a coalition in which they will be considerably weaker than before, or they will bring in a coalition government including secular political forces and parties, leaving Ennahda to languish in opposition. Such a coalition will also not be an easy prospect, as key parties and forces, among them the Popular Front, Republican Party, Congress and Ettakatol, have made it clear that will not join hands with figures associated with the Ben Ali dictatorship. When Al-Sebsi kicked off the campaign of the Nidaa' Tunis Party, he issued a press statement saying: “In these elections two projects will be competing: the Islamist project and the project of building a new, modern Tunisia for the 21st century. We will only ally with those parties that share our outlook, though we believe in the right of all parties engaged in politics to be active.” Observers do not rule out the possibility of an alliance between Ennahda and Nidaa', in view of their shared neoliberal economic outlook and the rounds of bilateral talks held between them several months ago in Paris. The talks were aimed at setting Tunisia on course for reconciliation, the promulgation of a new constitution and the forthcoming legislative and presidential elections.
