Tunisian voters went to the polls at the weekend in the country's first parliamentary elections since the 2011 Revolution Early unofficial indicators have showed the Nidaa Tounes (Tunisia Calling) Party ahead of its Islamist rival the Ennahda Party in the electoral race between political party, coalition and independent lists for the 217 seats in Tunisia's first parliament since the revolution three years ago. On Monday morning, Tunisians awoke to unconfirmed reports that the large liberal Nidaa Tounes Party headed by a veteran politician from the Bourguiba era Beji Caid Essebsi had begun to take a large lead over the Ennahda Party, headed by Rached Al-Ghannouchi, casting a shadow over the prospects of the latter to return to power at the head of a coalition government. Al-Asaad Ben Ahmed, press officer for the Supreme Elections Commission, told Al-Ahram Weekly that it was premature to speak of any party being in the lead or to discuss results. Earlier, the commission had said that it would announce the preliminary results on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning at the latest. Nevertheless, independent sources told the Weekly that initial counting in many polling districts had showed a head-to-head race between Ennahda and Nidaa and that these two parties were the only real contenders in the first and second districts. The sources added that Ennahda was ahead in the south of the country while Nidaa was in the lead in the coastal areas in the north and east. Naturally, the major focus of attention is on Tunis, Sfax, Sousa and Nabeul, cities with the highest population densities and, therefore, the largest numbers of parliamentary seats. However, by Monday evening unofficial and partial returns had appeared to confirm Nidaa's advance. That evening, Nabil Bafoon, a member of the Supreme Electoral Commission, told the Weekly that the tabulating phase was over and that the results from the polling stations were now being collated at the district level. He added that “the commission has no connection with the unofficial indicators that are being circulated; however, they are not far from the facts.” Further confirmation came from the Observers Network, the largest of the local poll monitoring organisations, which announced in a press conference that Nidaa was in the lead with 37 per cent of the vote while Ennahda followed in second place with 28 per cent. The organisation's spokesperson said that these figures were based on data collected by its representatives who had been monitoring the tabulation and collation processes in each electoral district. The widely followed Radio Mosaique also relayed a statement by Ennahda's official spokesman Ziyad Al-Adhari suggesting that his party had accepted Nidaa's lead and congratulating it on its win. However, the spokesperson quickly added that “we will wait for the results from the Electoral Commission and accept them regardless of how we rank.” In a press conference on Monday morning, Electoral Commission Chairman Shafiq Sirsar contested the credibility of the results of the opinion polls indicating Nidaa's lead over Ennahda, urging caution in dealing with any figures that did not come from the Commission. At the same time, he announced that an estimated 61.8 per cent of the Tunisian electorate had turned out to vote. To observers this was not necessarily an entirely positive figure as it signified that the turnout was about a million voters less than in the Constituent Assembly elections that were held in October 2011 and in which 6.3 million votes were cast. Around five million people had registered to vote in the current elections. In addition, the turnout of Tunisian voters abroad was surprisingly low at only around 29 per cent. Civil society organisations that collectively mobilised an army of 22,000 to monitor the integrity of the polls have reported that the election day passed peacefully without any notable incidents of violence. While they recorded some breaches and irregularities, they said that they were not severe enough to effect the results. In the opinion of many observers, the success of the legislative polls in Tunisia sends a defiant message from the Tunisian people against terrorism, which had begun to rear its head in the country only days before the polls. Nevertheless, there was one incident on election day that drew the attention of most Tunisian newspapers on Monday morning. When visiting a polling station in the capital on Sunday morning, US Ambassador to Tunisia Jacob (Jake) Walles suddenly found himself the object of angry cries. “Erhal,” or “leave” voters in the queue shouted, echoing the chant demonstrators shouted against former president Zein Al-Abidine Ben Ali during the revolution. Justifying his presence in the polling station, the US ambassador said that he had obtained a permit to monitor the polling process from the Supreme Electoral Commission. In its report on the incident, the Al-Maghreb newspaper observed that voters saw the ambassador's presence at the polling station as a kind of intervention in Tunisian affairs. People were also reported to have chanted “stay out America and stay out Qatar. The Tunisian people are a free people,” it said. A secular victory The secularist-leaning Nidaa Tounes Party outperformed the Islamists in Tunisia's recent elections The secular party that beat the Islamists to first place in last week's Tunisian parliamentary elections is virtually unknown in the region. Defeating Ennahda, the Arab world's largest legally-functioning Islamist political party, is no mean feat, and the accomplishment is particularly significant in the light of the background of the Nidaa Tounes, or Tunisia's Call, Party that pulled off this electoral surprise. Formed barely 30 months ago, Nidaa Tounes has refuted claims that it is a lightweight concoction of has-beens, or a “media ploy,” as some critics have asserted. It does, however, still have clear connections with the past, which is why many Tunisians, worried at what seemed to be an Islamist takeover, voted for it. Visitors to the party's headquarters in Tunis may remember seeing a large picture of Habib Bourguiba, the country's founding father, on the wall. Such paraphernalia is popular among the party's leaders: when asked about a cap that looked vaguely familiar Beij Caid Essebsi, the Nidaa leader who was prime minister in late 2011, said that Bouguiba had used to wear a similar one and to this day Essebsi is known to wear a type of sunglasses similar to those favoured by Tunisia's first president. Essebsi even wrote a book in French about the former leader entitled “Habib Bourguiba, le bon grain et l'ivraie” (The Wheat and the Chaff). Having served as interior then defence minister under Bourguiba, parliamentary speaker under ousted former president Zein Al-Abdine Ben Ali, and prime minister after the 2011 revolution, the soft-spoken octogenarian is a well-known figure in Tunisian politics. At present, Essebsi is widely seen as a defender of the country's secular legacy, a guardian of its revolution, and a symbol of its resilience. According to Nidaa Tounes spokesman Lazhar Akremi, it was Essebsi who started the party through a call he addressed on 26 January 2012 to all the country's political parties, urging them to support the holding of early elections. At the time, public discontent with the Ennahda-led troika government was on the rise, and many feared that the Islamists were about to reverse the country's cosmopolitan culture. “During his time as prime minister, it became clear that Essebsi was gaining public support. His government succeeded in shoring up the economy, restored security, and acted in harmony with the country's culture. When the troika government took over, the public began comparing its dismal performance with that of our government,” Akremi said. Nidaa does not have a specific ideology. It leaders are unionists, leftists or liberals. Some made their name during Bourguiba's time, while others rose to eminence during the rule of Ben Ali. The party is backed financially by prominent businessmen, some said to have been Ben Ali's cronies. This may explain why Nidaa has not convened a general meeting thus far. The party has not even elected its top leaders, although it has somehow managed to put together winning lists in various constituencies. Party sources claim that Nidaa has 100,000 members, almost as many as Ennahda. But there is no comparison between the free-floating format of the Nidaa and the rigorous structures of Ennahda, Tunisia's top Islamist movement. Nidaa has more than made up for its structural weakness by presenting itself as an alternative to the Islamists. During the election campaign, the party urged voters to “make their votes count,” in other words to refrain from giving their votes to secularist parties that are too small to offer a serious challenge to Ennahda, which has for the past three years dominated Tunisian politics. In short, the party encouraged a punitive vote against Ennahda, which many accuse of breaking its 2011 election promises. But Nidaa's programme strangely enough packages the same centrist and liberal policies that Ennahda presents, making the main difference between the two the emotive strains of identity politics. Because the elections depended on the personal popularity of the candidates more than in the last elections in Autumn 2011, more also depended on the public appeal of the heads of the party lists this time around. Essebsi and his aides used this aspect skillfully, relying on the support of the elderly and women, so far the most skeptical of Ennahda's intentions, in order to do well in the polls. However, it is still unclear what kind of coalition government Nidaa is going to put together, with some envisaging a coalition in which Ennahda will be allowed to play a role and others seeing this as mere speculation. Much will depend on the upcoming presidential elections on 23 November. If Essebsi runs for president and wins, it is likely that Nidaa will exclude Ennahda from the government and opt for a coalition with the smaller parties. However, if Essebsi fails in his presidential bid, a compromise with the Islamists will be inevitable. ‘We are the alternative' At a recent election rally in downtown Tunis Ennahda leaders did their best to reassure the movement's secularist critics It was the largest political rally in Tunisia's legislative elections. Just hours before the electoral silence imposed at midnight on Friday, Ennahda brought its supporters in force to downtown Tunis, reassuring them of victory and promising them a leading role in shaping the country's future. The campaign preceding the 26 October elections saw candidates of various parties vying for attention, visiting homes, touring cafes, and holding rallies in makeshift pavilions. But the grand finale was launched by Rached Al-Ghannouchi's Ennahda Party, an Islamist movement that used to have connections with the Muslim Brotherhood but has distanced itself from it in recent months. For its final meeting, Ennahda chose a location in central Tunis, Habib Bourguiba Avenue and the adjacent Borg Al-Saa, or Clock Tower Square. The invitations to the gathering were sent out on postcards bearing the image of Borg Al-Saa, site of the protests of 14 January 2011. Before the recent revolution, it was called the 7 November Revolution Square, commemorating ousted former president Zein Al-Abidine Ben Ali's overthrow of former president Habib Bourguiba. Tiny election gatherings by other parties that attracted small crowds on the final day of the campaigning could be seen. But a few blocks away, thousands were converging on Bourguiba Avenue to cheer on Tunisia's leading Islamist group. Ennahda has been criticised for failing to follow the social justice agenda it had promised when it was in power. Critics have also lambasted the movement for going into alliance with former regime figures. To deflect such criticisms, Ennahda officials keep emphasising that their group voluntarily stepped down from the power, will not field presidential candidates, and will instead focus on rallying the nation around a modernist agenda. In choosing the biggest public space in the capital and the one most connected with the revolution, Ennahda aimed to put a point across – that it is still in charge and that unlike other Islamists in the region it can keep the country on the right path. Ennahda, which has been in the opposition since the early 1980s, shared power with two secular parties for two years ending in January 2014. It claims a membership of 100,000 people in a country of 11 million. This makes it not only one of the largest Islamist groups in the Arab world, but also the most pragmatic – a point which was repeatedly underlined in the three-and-a-half-hour rally. Ennahda owes much to the 14 January Revolution, for it wasn't allowed to form a political party under Ben Ali's rule. According to Al-Ghannouchi, Ennahda's founder and leader, the party has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, and recent Ennahda literature, and some of the books Al-Ghannouchi himself has written, criticise the Brotherhood for the way it mixes politics with religion. Religious tones were relatively muted at the Ennahda gathering, and there were no shouts of allahu akbar (God is Great) or lillah ilhamd (Praise be to God), which are common fare among Brotherhood speakers. More to the point, no mention was made to the events of Rabaa Square in Egypt in August 2013, and there were no hand gestures or related slogans from the podium or the audience. One young man at the outer edge of the gathering was waving the entwined flags of Tunisia, Egypt and Palestine. But the regional aspect was mostly absent from the speeches, except for the repeated reference to Tunisia being the only “shining light” in the darkness that had descended on the Arab Spring states. Between speeches, songs were played glamorising the revolution and speaking of love and peace in the country. The rally started with a recital from the Quran, and when the reader came to the verse “Lord, give us victory against the infidels,” the crowds broke up in ululation. It is at moments like this that Tunisians who seek a modern state question the veracity of Ennahda's reconciliatory rhetoric. For the past few months, Ennahda leaders have been at pains to reassure non-Islamists that the good of the country matters more to them than any sectarian agenda. Speaking for nearly one hour, Al-Ghannouchi, 66, mixed vernacular with classical Arabic while extolling the merits of his movement. He may lack charisma, but he came across as a clear-headed politician with a capacity to identify problems and seek compromises when needed. In remarks meant for politicians of the old regime who are running for parliament on the lists of four different parties, Al-Ghannouchi promised that his movement would be willing to form a coalition government with the winners. “We are the real alternative to the Islamic State and extremist interpretations of Islam. We are the proof that Islam and democracy are compatible,” he said.
